July 2016 Release Notes

The govinfo team recently implemented code changes including design and display updates, backend performance improvements, search engine tweaks, additional functionality, and a range of other enhancements. Below are some highlights.

New Features

• Initial functionality for browsing content by Government Author
• New related documents functionality: Bills and Public Laws Details pages now link to related Congressional Reports; for example: Visit the Aviation Investment and Reform Act Details page and click the tab labeled "Related Documents"
• Browse pages for 4 more publications/collections: Congressional Reports, House Rules and Manual, Journal of the House, and Senate Manual
• Content Details pages for 7 more collections and Document in Context for 12 more collections
• Additional share buttons on various pages (e.g. collection browse pages, Congressional Committee browse pages)

New Content

• Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, Second Session of the 113th Congress, made available May 18, 2016
• Semiannual Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions, made available June 9, 2016
• More than 70,000 opinions have been added to the U.S. Courts Opinions collection in the past several months, bringing the total number of U.S. Courts Opinions available on govinfo to more than 1.5 million

Minor Fixes and Enhancements

• Fixed missing sections and added links to download the full issue on the Federal Register Table of Contents
• Fixed an error that intermittently prevented browse from displaying on Congressional Committee browse pages
• Fixed display of thumbnail images on Details pages for certain publications
• Fixed layout of some browse page sections causing large white spaces
• Fixed Congressional Hearings browse display to appear in order from new to old
• Fixed search widget on error pages
• Fixed minor display issues on Congressional Documents and Economic Indicators browse pages
• Fixed issues with Document in Context for the U.S. Courts and Statutes collections
• Fixed XML links on Code of Federal Regulation browse pages
• Fixed display issue for Daily Compilation of Presidential Documents browse page on mobile
• Implemented minor design and styling updates including changing link color to orange
• Added field to the MODS for Congressional Bills
• Added tag for inserted comments to the MODS for the Congressional Record
• Added field to the MODS for the Code of Federal Regulations
• Removed duplicate bill references on Congressional Hearings Details pages
• Fixed to the Chapter Title field for the U.S. Code in Advanced Search

Featured Articles

We posted 14 feature articles highlighting recently added and updated content, and curated collections of content related to current events. These articles included documents relating to the 60th anniversary of the law creating the interstate system, combating the Zika virus, FDA changes to nutrition facts labels, and U.S. Court opinions on NFL football player Tom Brady's suspension.

Developer Community

We made the 113th House Rules and Manual available in XML format using the United States Legislative Markup (USLM) schema. This addition came shortly after making available the 114th House Rules and Manual in XML. These XML files are available individually on govinfo and GPO's GitHub account, and for bulk download on GPO's bulk data repository.

Coming Soon

The following are a few of our next priorities for development. Check our Release Notes in about 3 months for the next development highlights.

• Remaining browse pages and content detail pages
• Updates to URLs
• Integrated Help information
• Linking additional related documents within the system
• Initial functionality for implementing alerts/notifications
• Incorporation of related resources on remaining browse pages
• Fixes for search filter functionality
• Updates to search results
• Efforts to improve overall site performance
• Additional minor enhancements and fixes