RECAP Extension 0.6 Beta Released

The Mozilla Foundation released version 3.6 of Firefox today, and we're proud to release the corresponding version of the RECAP extension, beta version 0.6. In addition to Firefox 3.6 compatibility, we've also thrown in a new feature suggested by our users: the option to save documents using filenames that we describe as "lawyer style" in contrast to the "Internet Archive style" we've traditionally used. For example, rather than saving a document as "gov.uscourts.cand.204881.46.0.pdf," you can now configure the extension to store a document as "N.D.Cal._3-08-cv-03251_46_0.pdf." Those who prefer the traditional filenames are free to continue using those as well.

We've also improved our docket-parsing code, allowing us to extract more metadata from court dockets. New fields we're now scraping include "Assigned to", "Referred to " , "Cause", "Nature of Suit", "Jury Demand", "Jurisdiction", and "Demand." We also scrape information about parties, including names, contact information, and attorneys. You can see a good example here (to choose a case at random).

If you're an existing Firefox user, Firefox periodically checks for updates to extensions and should automatically fetch the new version of the RECAP extension. Or you can force it to check immediately by clicking Tools->Extensions->Find Updates (or, depending on your Firefox version, Tools->Add-Ons->Find Updates). As always, please let us know if you find any bugs.