The Reader's Helper

It's like having a search engine that follows you around from web page to web page and knows what you're interested in
It's like having a smart browser that highlights the interesting parts of the web page automatically
It's got this great scrollbar tool, called the Thumbar, which shows you a thumbnail of the entire web page
The Thumbar also highlights the interesting areas of the document which correspond to the highlighting on the actual web page
The Thumbar then provides a visual way of scrolling throughout the web page.
It's easy to download and install and only requires that you run Internet Explorer 5.0 and either Windows 98 or NT.

Screen Shots

	before turning Reader's Helper on
	Reader's Helper turned on with Thumbar on the left side and Topics area at the bottom. Topic labels represent topics which are present in the document and their score which is based on the similarity to the document.
	using the Thumbar as a scrollbar and scrolling to locations in the document based on the visual information
	the contents of a topic of interest: user defined keyword phrases. One method for adding relevant phrases to a topic is by using the "drag and drop" method, where phrases from a document are dropped on a topic label.

FollowMe Web Site

The FollowMe site is an e-community web site for Reader's Helper users. It provides for topic sharing where users may export their own topics to the FollowMe site so that others may download them into their own user profile. For instance, if I create a topic on Bridgestone/Firetone Tires because I have these tires on my vehicle, I can share this topic with others who may be interested in this topic by exporting it to the FollowMe site.

Screen Shots

	FollowMe web site; top level of the category hierarchy.
	in the "CurrentEvents" category
	importing the Bridgestone/Firestone topic from FollowMe via drag-n-drop

Animationed GIFs which demonstrate some features in the Reader's Helper
(these are a bit crude but maybe they will help you understand the technology a bit better)

Animation 1	shows topic highlighting & thumbar usage.
Animation 2	shows FollowMe topic importing and topic highlighting as a result of the new topic.
Animation 3	shows the ShowFind feature; a special kind of find within the document.
Animation 4	shows the AutoTopic feature: it automatically creates a topic for you when you use a search

The Reader's Helper

Screen Shots

FollowMe Web Site

Screen Shots

Animationed GIFs which demonstrate some features in the Reader's Helper (these are a bit crude but maybe they will help you understand the technology a bit better)

Animationed GIFs which demonstrate some features in the Reader's Helper
(these are a bit crude but maybe they will help you understand the technology a bit better)