WO2003034292A1 - Information innotation system and method - Google Patents

Abstract

A system and method of annotating documents to enable viewers to more readily recognise annotations made by other users as compared with the annotations made by the original author. Portions of the document are selected and emphasized (highlighted, bolded, circled, ringed, margin marks, etc) while the non-selected portions are faded. Also disclosed is the use of just the circling or ringing of the selected portions of the text. Further disclosed is that the annotations are in a separate file or instruction set which can be overlaid onto the original document.

Description

INFORMATION ANNOTATION SYSTEM AND METHOD FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates generally to directing a viewer's attention to relevant portions of textual and graphical information displayed to the viewer and includes a method and system of document annotation and presentation that make it easier for a viewer to recognise those parts of a document that have been annotated, whether that document is viewed on a visual display or in printed form.

The invention also includes a system and method of adding information to an annotated document such that a viewer may also comprehend the added information as being important. In this respect, the method and system relates to the addition of information subsequent to the annotation of a document. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Graphic artists, web page designers, communication specialists, and authors generally create "documents" (paper documents, bill-boards, posters, movies, word processing documents, web pages, computer displays, etc) with the aim of communicating information which may be in the form of themes, messages or ideas, to viewers. Viewers may be considered to be either passive (for example, a newspaper reader) or active (a computer user viewing a web page or a word processing document).

Authors employ many techniques to increase the effectiveness of communicating their information. These techniques are generally intended to direct the attention of a viewer by use of layout, font, colour schemes, images and audio to highlight important parts of a document such as the title or a summary.

It is usual for authors to emphasise text with effects such as bold, italic, highlighting, colour, font size, font type, paragraph bars, "post-it" notes, and graphical constructs surrounding important text. Various animation techniques have also been used for effective presentation of information. For example, Microsoft's Powerpoint application supports animation features such as the "Flashbulb" and "Appear and dim" facilities. All of these techniques are used to direct a viewers attention by dominating the rest of the document, either dynamically (by animation effects) or statically (by highlighting).

These techniques were generally developed for mass communications where a "document" is viewed by many people. Web pages delivered by web sites of organisations such as CNN and New York Times are examples.

Another example (refer Figure 1) is an advertisement for a motor vehicle

(Nissan 200SX) that appeared in a newspaper.

The "publisher" of a document selects what they regard to be important. However, a viewer may consider other aspects to be important and may want to emphasise those portions that have not been emphasised in the original document. A common practice is to photocopy or print a document and annotate it by highlighting portions of the document such as including writing in the margins, circling portions of the document, etc. and filing it for later reference. In certain instances, a user may want to transmit the personally annotated version of the document by facsimile or electronic mail to another person.

Documents delivered by computers can also be annotated. Users can annotate word processing and similar documents in a variety of ways to emphasise what is important to them and / or their colleagues. It is also possible to annotate web pages to emphasise a portion of the page that is considered important.

Annotating documents adds to the information contained in the document. Sometimes documents are long, contain many images and employ many presentation techniques. Such documents are already "information-rich" and can even be perceived by a viewer as containing too many attention directing devices. User's annotations to such documents need to dominate over existing attention-directing elements in the original document. However, the addition of further annotation to a document may cause that document to become less attractive and could even lead to the perception that the document has become too confusing with too many attention directing devices.

Clearly, annotations more effectively grasp the attention of a viewer if they dominate the rest of a document. For the purposes of this specification, the word "annotation" is used in the general sense of identifying, and in some way altering the appearance, of an important part of a document. However, annotation may or may not have an immediate visible affect on the document. Massive amounts of information are transferred between individuals electronically via email and shared documents. The ability of an individual to extract valuable information from this volume of data is limited. Moreover, it is often difficult to surmise exactly what the sender of a document considers to be important even if the entire document is analysed. Similarly, whilst viewing a previously stored document, it is difficult to recollect what aspects were considered important at the time a user elected to save and store a document. Annotations may be used to alleviate this problem.

Web pages delivered by web sites employ various stylistic techniques to direct a viewer's attention. Pages containing news or analyses, for example, could be long and for this type of information it is desirable that a viewer is able to quickly see the important aspects of the document, in its context, and then direct their attention to those areas he / she considers to be interesting.

While viewing documents, it is desirable for annotations to effectively dominate the rest of the document without unduly confusing a viewer. Users applying their own annotations to documents is problematical as the added annotations usually compete for a viewer's attention with annotations in the original document.

Advertisements in documents are usually designed to grasp a viewer's attention. However, irrespective of the design of an advertisement, if the goods or services being advertised are not relevant or of no interest to a consumer, the advertisement fails to achieve its objective.

Although advertising or promotional messages that are relevant for transmission to a consumer is generally recognized as being difficult. Various techniques are used to determine the most relevant advertisements and messages for a particular consumer based upon known or implied characteristics of a consumer. Knowledge of the purchasing characteristics of a consumer enables a supplier to identify the types of goods and services that are likely to be considered by a consumer for subsequent purchase. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

In one aspect, the present invention provides a method of annotating a document to emphasize portions thereof including the steps of: selecting portions of the document to be emphasized; and fading the visual representation of the non-selected portions of the document.

In another aspect, the present invention provides a method of annotating a document to emphasise portions thereof including the steps of: selecting portions of the document to be emphasised; and including a graphical construct in the visual representation of the document that identifies the portion of the document to be emphasised.

For the purposes of this specification, the term "graphical construct" means any object that is predominantly defined by its shape.

In a preferred embodiment, the graphical construct is either a substantially vertical bar positioned alongside the portion of the document to be emphasized or a substantially elliptical or rectangular boundary that substantially surrounds the portion.

In essence, the abovementioned aspects of the invention stem from the realisation that in order for an annotation added by a user to be more noticeable to a viewer, the added annotation should be substantially different from the annotations used by the original author. For example, annotating a document by bolding strings of text may not be effective for directing a viewer's attention to that string of text as this technique may have been used in other portions of the document by the original author. In this instance, a subsequent viewer of an annotated document may not be able to distinguish between the annotation applied by the user from the stylistic techniques of the original author.

In a particularly preferred embodiment, the fading of portions of a document occurs automatically as a result of those not being identified for emphasizing. For example, a user may select portions of a document to be emphasized by annotating those portions with a paragraph or other type annotation. Upon completing the annotation process, in this embodiment of the invention, the non-annotated portions of the document are automatically faded. When annotation is applied to a document in the form of fading selected portions to be de-emphasized, it is preferable that a user be provided with the facility to select the extent to which the representation of the selected portions are faded. Irrespective of the form of annotation applied, it is preferred that a user be provided with the facility to save a document in its annotated state for future reference. Additionally, a user may be provided with the facility to transmit a document in its annotated state to another user for viewing. In this instance, an annotated document may be transmitted to another user in the form of an electronic mail attachment. In a preferred embodiment of the invention, recipients of an annotated document in an electronic mail message are provided with the ability to view the document in its annotated state upon extracting the document from the mail message. Preferably, when annotation in the form of fading has been applied to a document, recipients are provided with the facility to select the extent to which the representation of selected portions in the document are faded.

Recipients of an annotated document may also be provided with the facility to view the document in its original un-annotated state or may selectively deactivate specific annotations or groups of annotations. In a preferred embodiment of the invention, portions of an original document may be defined as being incapable of annotation. This is particularly useful where a document includes advertising material and it is considered un-desirable to allow such advertising to be annotated. This is particularly the case where annotation in the form of fading is applied.

In one embodiment of the invention, recipients of annotated documents may select to concurrently view the annotated document and the original document thus enabling the viewer to compare the original and annotated document.

In a particularly preferred embodiment of the invention, where annotations are applied in the form of fading, the extent to which a portion of a document is faded is variable across the document. In this instance a user may select the variation of fading of portions across a document. Variable fading across a document can be a useful adjunct for directing the attention of a viewer to a selected portion of a document and in one embodiment, variation of the extent of fading is dependent upon the distance from the selected portion of the document to be emphasized.

Of course, portions of a document selected for emphasizing may be spread through out a document and may be separated by a significant distance. In this instance, an embodiment of the invention enables emphasized portions of a document to be rearranged in order to bring those portions into closer proximity to each other thus reducing the required display size for the annotated document.

In another aspect, the present invention provides a system for annotating a document to emphasize portions thereof including: a selection means to select at least one portion of the document to be emphasized; and a means to include identifiers in the document indicating the non-selected portions such that fading of the visual representation of those non-selected portions occurs when the document is subsequently displayed to a viewer. In a further aspect, the present invention provides a system for annotating a document to emphasize portions thereof including: a means to select a least one portion of the document to be emphasized; and a means to include identifiers in the document indicating that portion of the document in which a graphical construct will be represented in a visual display of the document.

In yet a further aspect, the present invention provides a system for annotating a document to emphasise portions thereof including: a selection means to select at least one portion of the document to be emphasised; and a means to generate an overlay for the document, the overlay formed such that, in use, the overlay allows selected portions of the document to be displayed visually without any alteration to the representation thereof and causing non- selected portions to be displayed with a faded appearance. In another aspect, the present invention provides a method of enabling a user to annotate a document, such that portions thereof may be emphasized, the method including the steps of: receiving a copy request for a document from a user's host system; identifying the document that the user has selected to copy; transmitting to the user a viewable representation of the document; and transmitting computer instruction code for execution on the user's host system, the computer instruction code providing the user with the facility to effect annotations to the copy of the document on the user's host system.

In essence, this aspect of the invention stems from the realisation that annotation of documents by users is likely to be more rapidly accepted if the facilities for applying annotations are provided along with a copy of the document thus avoiding the requirement for the user to separately install the necessary computer instruct code to avail themselves of the annotation facilities.

In addition to effecting annotations to the copy of the document on the user's host system, the user is preferably provided with additional facilities enabling the user to save an electronic copy of an annotated document, transmit an electronic representation of an annotated document to a viewer by electronic mail and to prevent applied annotations from being de-activated.

In a further aspect, the present invention provides a system for enabling a user to annotate a document, such that at least one portion thereof may be emphasized, the system including: a means to receive a copy request for a document from a user's host system, a means to identify a document that the user has selected to copy; and a means to transmit to the user a viewable representation of the document; wherein the means to transmit a viewable representation of the document also transmits computer instruction code for execution on the user's host system, the computer instruction code providing the facility for the user to effect annotations to the copy of the document on the user's host system.

In yet a further aspect, the present invention provides a method of selecting relevant information to associate with a document that is being transmitted to a viewer where a document has been annotated, the method including the steps of: receiving the annotated document for subsequent transmission; analyzing the annotated document to determine those portions of the document that have been selected for emphasis by annotations; analyzing the emphasized portions and determining the information content of those portions; identifying relevant information for association with the document based upon the information content of the annotated portions; and associating the relevant information with the document and transmitting the document and associated information to its intended destination.

In essence, this aspect of the invention stems from the realisation that annotated portions of a document may be used as an indicator of the characteristics of a user for the purpose of selecting advertising or promotional messages, the annotated portions of the document being used to determine the type of information considered important to the user, or considered to be important to another user to whom the annotated document is being transmitted.

This aspect of the invention is particularly useful when the relevant information is advertising information. In this instance, the advertising information may be included in the document prior to the annotated document being transmitted to its intended destination. In one embodiment of the invention, associated information is prevented from being subsequently annotated by a recipient of the document. This is particularly useful when advertising information is included in annotated documents as advertisers wish to ensure that their advertising material is not easily removed from a document and continues to have a lasting effect. The term "document" as used herein is intended to include computer software code or data that is capable of being indexed according to its content or meta-data associated therewith, including but not limited to, web pages, e- mails, word processing documents, multi media files, static and dynamic images, executing programs (eg spreadsheets), search terms, document categories or even a previously conducted search output.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Embodiments of the invention will now be described with reference to the following figures, in which: Figure 1 is a partial reproduction of an advertisement for a Nissan 200SX motorcar including a first style of annotation to emphasise various paragraphs;

Figure 2 is an annotated version of Figure 1 , where an additional style annotation is included in the form of selective fading;

Figure 3 is an illustration of an original web page with no annotation added by a user;

Figure 4 is an illustration of the web page of Figure 3 with annotations in the form of holding and highlighting added by a user; Figure 5 is an illustration of the web page of Figure 4 with the addition of a further style of annotation in the form of selective fading;

Figure 6 is an illustration of a web page that includes an advertisement; Figure 7 is an illustration of the web page of Figure 6 with annotation in the form of selective fading that has not been applied to the advertisement; Figure 8 is another illustration of an original web page with no annotations added by a user;

Figure 9 is an illustration of the web page of Figure 8 with an added annotation in the form of a paragraph bar;

Figure 10 is an illustration of the web page of Figure 9 with the inclusion of a further style of annotation in the form of selective fading;

Figure 11 is an illustration of a web page with a particularly preferred form of annotation in the form of paragraph bar;

Figures 12 and 13 illustrate alternative annotation styles; Figures 14 and 15 illustrate a toolbar that is dynamically added to web pages;

Figures 16, 17 and 18 illustrate a toolbar that resides on a user's computer;

Figure 19 provides a diagrammatic representation of the primary method steps for incorporating a fade add-in; Figure 20 provides a diagrammatic representation of the structure of a document with faded elements; and Figures 21 and 22 provide a diagrammatic representation of the primary functional components of display and edit functions of a system according to the present invention. DESCRIPTION OF PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS This invention may be advantageously used to enhance email communication. Of course, the invention is not restricted to electronic mail applications but a preferred embodiment of the invention will be described relating to this type of communication.

When communicating via electronic mail, a sender, who may or may not be the original author of a document, may send the document to an intended recipient to assist the communication of a message from the sender to the recipient. When attaching a document to an electronic mail message, the sender can increase the efficiency of the communication by annotating the document to direct the attention of the recipient to portions of the document most relevant for the email communication. Generally, documents include various annotation techniques implemented by the original author to direct the attention of a viewer to portions of the document that the author considers important. However, a sender may wish to direct the attention of a recipient to other portions of the document that are important to the sender and the recipient. Accordingly, it is preferable that the sender apply an annotation technique to the document that is clearly distinguishable form annotation techniques applied by the original author.

For example, with reference to Figure 1 , an advertisement for a motor vehicle as it appeared in a local newspaper is illustrated. As can be seen from Figure 1 , the document has been annotated by the application of generally elliptical constructs to various paragraphs of the newspaper article highlighting those portions of the article that are considered important to a user. In a preferred embodiment of the invention, prior to transmitting a document as it appears in Figure 1 to a recipient, portions of the article that are of reduced relevance to the sender are identified and faded as compared with those portions that are considered more relevant to the user. Having performed these method steps, the documents appearance is altered as detailed in Figure 2. The document as it appears in Figure 2 may then be transmitted to a recipient and upon receipt thereof, the recipient is able to readily recognize those portions of the document that the sender considers relevant for the purpose of the email communication.

In a particularly preferred embodiment, upon extracting the document from the email message, the recipient is presented with a visual representation of the document as it was sent by the sender. However, in this embodiment, the recipient is provided with the facility to selectively deactivate annotations that have been applied to the original document including the facility to select the extent to which portions of the document are faded. In this particular embodiment, the recipient may also concurrently view and un-annotated version of the document along with the annotated version as received from the sender. Further, deactivating annotations in reverse chronological order is particularly preferred as it enables a recipient to deactivate annotations in the reverse order of which they were applied. Of course, in this embodiment the sender is also able to select the extent to which portions of the document may be faded prior to transmission to an intended recipient.

A recipient of an annotated document may apply further annotations to the document prior to sending that document to further intended recipients.

The use of selective fading as an annotation technique has a distinct advantage over all other types or styles of annotation technique in that the technique does not compete with other annotation techniques to grasp the attention of a recipient or viewer. The selective fading of all other portions of a document that are not considered important effectively emphasises portions of a document without requiring addition of further annotations intended to grasp a viewer's attention. Once a document contains two or three styles of annotation, the addition of further styles of annotation can act to confuse a viewer with respect to those portions of the document the viewer should focus their attention upon. Accordingly, the use of selective fading is a more effective technique of annotation as it reduces the amount of information that a viewer is required to process in order to understand which portions of a document are considered important from the sender's perspective.

Figure 3 shows an original web page with no annotations added by a user. As can be readily identified, the web page contains various annotations applied by the original author in the form of larger font size and bolded characters. However, a user viewing this document may consider the document to be useful for communication with a colleague and may wish to send a copy of the web page to that colleague. Various portions of the web page may be of particular relevance to the user's colleague and the user may apply annotations to the web page in an attempt to draw their colleagues attention to those relevant portions of the web page. For example, the user may apply various annotation techniques such as holding text, increasing the font size of text and highlighting text as detailed in Figure 4 prior to transmitting a copy of the web page to their colleague. Whilst the various annotation techniques detailed in Figure 4 are useful, a recipient of such an annotated web page may consider the additional annotations confusing in view of the annotation techniques applied by the original author.

However, according to a preferred embodiment of the invention, a user may also de-emphasize various portions of the web page by selecting those portions and causing the representation of those portions to be faded as compared with the non-selected portions of the document. In this instance, a copy of a web page as detailed in Figure 5 may be generated for subsequent transmission to the user's colleague. Upon receipt of the copy of the web page illustrated in Figure 5, a recipient is able to determine those portions of the document considered to be relevant by the sender more easily as compared with the annotated document detailed in Figure 4.

It is particularly preferred for a user to be able to combine the use of selective fading along with other annotation techniques when annotating a document for a colleague.

In this instance, having applied an annotation such as highlighting or increasing font size to certain portions of a document, the user may then select all other portions of the document and fade those remaining portions. Whilst the combination of annotation techniques effectively emphasises various portions of the document twice, this allows a recipient to de-activate the fading annotation whilst retaining an indication of the portions of the document considered important to the sender.

This is particularly useful in instances where a recipient may require an understanding of the context of an emphasised portion of a document and needs to be able to read text in faded portions of the document surrounding an emphasised paragraph. Having received a document such as that detailed in Figure 5, the user may gain a better appreciation of the relevance of the emphasised portions of text by reading some of the surrounding faded text. Allowing a recipient to "unfade" the faded portions of the annotated document enables them to review the previously faded text whist retaining an indication of the portions of text considered important by the sender. Further, this approach allows a user to effectively designate those portions of a document to fade by application of fading to any portion of a document that has not been annotated by the user. Of course, it may not be desirable to allow users to apply annotations to every portion of a document and in a preferred embodiment of an invention, document authors are able to designate portions of an original document that may not be subsequently annotated by a user. For example, with reference to Figure 6, a web page including an advertisement is illustrated. In this instance, the author of the web page would prefer to prevent any annotation being applied to copies of the web page in respect of the advertisement. Accordingly, the web page author is provided with a facility to designate the advertisement as a portion of the document that cannot be annotated and as such, any subsequent application of an annotation technique by a user is not effective with respect to the advertisement. For example, as detailed in Figure 7, a user may obtain a copy of the web page and attempt to apply an annotation in the form of fading to a portion of the web page including the advertisement. In this instance, the various portions of document that were selected for fading have that particular annotation applied except for the advertisement portion of the document. Of course, other types of annotation technique may be used in an attempt to more effectively direct the attention of a viewer to a portion of a document. With reference to Figure 8, a portion of a web page is illustrated displaying a paragraph that is considered to be relevant to a user. In this instance, the user selects the portion of the document that they wish to emphasize and having selected that portion, a substantially vertical paragraph bar is included in the document to emphasize that portion of the document.

According to an embodiment of the invention, a substantially vertical paragraph bar may be used as an annotation technique. For this particular annotation style, it is particularly preferred that upon selecting a portion of the document to emphasise, and selecting the "vertical bar" annotation style, the selected portion of the document is displaced to allow the "vertical bar" to be positioned substantially within the nominal outside boundary or borders established by the textual or diagrammatic contents of the document. Despite the inclusions of a paragraph bar annotation, other annotation techniques may be additionally applied to the copy of the web page and in the instance of Figure 10, text surrounding the paragraph that has been annotated with a substantially vertical paragraph bar has been further annotated by application of the fading technique.

With reference to Figure 11, a particularly preferred embodiment of the vertical paragraph bar type of annotation is illustrated wherein a paragraph of text in a copy of a web page has been annotated with a substantially vertical paragraph bar and various text boxes have been associated with the paragraph bar enabling a user to insert comments in the text boxes relating to the annotated paragraph.

Other styles of annotation are also provided in the present invention including substantially elliptical and rectangular constructs that are generated by the computer and substantially encapsulate or surround a selected portion of the document. These annotation styles are shown in Figures 12 and 13 respectively.

In another aspect of the invention, computer instruction code providing users with the facility to apply annotations to a document are associated with a copy of the document and are transmitted to the user's host system for execution thereon. For example, annotation facilities may be delivered by a web site as an integral part of the document being assessed, viewed and copied. With reference to Figure 14, a copy of a portion of a web site is illustrated, as it would be displayed on a user's host system along with a relocatable tool bar, referred to as "Vishbar Lite". The relocatable tool bar provides annotation facilities to a user, which may be effected by selecting buttons corresponding to the desired annotation facility on the tool bar. In a preferred embodiment of the invention, the annotation tools include the facilities to apply various annotations to selected portions of a document including the facility to fade/unfade portions of the document and to apply a range of annotations. The computer instruction code implementing the annotation tools may be delivered by a web site or may be associated with every page of a document that is accessed and downloaded by the user to their own host system. For example, an annotation tool bar could be dynamically associated with every web page delivered by a particular web site. Additionally, as illustrated in Figure 15, the annotation tool bar may also include the facility to enable a user to transmit a copy of the annotated document to another user in the form of an electronic mail message. As is also illustrated in Figure 15, this particular facility is provided to a user in various forms enabling the user to send the document in its current form by electronic mail (E-mail Page) or to send a copy of the page in an annotated form with de-emphasized text faded (E-mail Faded Page).

With reference to Figure 16, the visual display of a users host system is illustrated depicting a copy of a portion of a web page viewed by a software application incorporating annotation facilities as an integral part of the software application. In this instance, the annotation facilities are provided to the user in a separate tool bar identified as "Vishbar". In this particular embodiment of the invention, the facility to select the extent to which de-emphasized portions of the document will be faded is detailed in a drop down box enabling the user to select the extent of fading, the options including 0%, 20%, 40%, 60% and 80%. In the particular example of Figure 17, the user has selected all the text on the page to be de-emphasized apart from the title "stick with us, says Howard" and the phrase "the Prime Minister hits the hustings in Brisbane's northern suburbs". In addition, the user has elected to de-emphasize the selected text with maximal fading, namely 0% and accordingly, the de-emphasized text has been faded to such an extent that it is no longer discernable to a viewer. The same annotation is also detailed in Figure 18 with an 80% fading selection for de-emphasised portions of the document and as such, the de-emphasized portions remain discernable to a viewer.

In an embodiment of the invention, the software application executing on a user's host system that is used for the purpose of viewing, accessing and copying documents is installed as an "add-in" on the host system which acts as an intermediary between the application presentation layer and the data. The "add- in" may be permanently installed or dynamically installed upon the user selecting the option to view a document. In this respect, Figure 19 provides a diagrammatic representation of the primary method steps for incorporating a fade "add-in". In an embodiment of the invention using HTML documents and the Microsoft Internet explorer to view such documents, the "add-in" is a COM object that is notified on completion of the document being loaded. The COM "add-in" presents the user with a tool bar enabling them to effect the fade annotation function including the ability to adjust the intensity of the faded content. PREFERRED EMBODIMENT FOR ANNOTATING HTML DOCUMENTS

A particularly preferred embodiment of the invention is now described as it relates to the annotation of web pages that accord with the HTML standard and viewed by a Microsoft internet Explorer Web Browser. Although this embodiment relates specifically to the HTML standard and a particular type of Web Browser, the concepts described are applicable to any text based document including those generated by word processing software applications. A relocatable toolbar (eg Vishbar Lite) is hosted on a web server in the same manner as normal web pages and is inserted into web pages as users download them from the host server. The computer instruction code that performs the annotations is executed entirely on the user's computer as compared with the host server. The code is not installed on the user's computer but is interpreted at run-time and discarded after use. This is implemented using JavaScript and Java and is executed on the user's computer in real-time by their web browser with respect to open documents. INSTALLATION OF TOOLBAR IN WEB PAGES

The toolbar includes a range of downloadable JavaScript, Java, image and configuration files that are temporarily stored on the host server. There is no other installation requirement with respect to computer instruction cod on the host unless a user wishes to automate the insertion of the toolbar in outgoing web pages from their system.

A web page includes toolbar functionality by including the following HTML code:

<SCRIPT language=JavaScript άd=vblScriptRoot src= "VishBarLite . j s " ></SCRIPT> <DIV style="Z-INDEX: 200; LEFT: Opx; WIDTH: 20px; POSITION: absolute; TOP: Opx" ><IMG onclick=vblShowToolBar () ; alt="Annotate this page" src=" blHighlightPen.gif"_></DIV> The first section, enclosed by the "SCRIPT" tags, indicates that the web page include the "VishBarLite.js" JavaScript file. This first file contains the computer instruction code required to load the toolbar "Vishbar Lite" without including any of the annotation code itself. This approach minimises the impact on web page download times if the user does not choose to annotate the page that includes the Vishbar Lite toolbar.

The second section, enclosed by the "DIV" tags, provides a button for users to select that activates the Vishbar Lite toolbar. This section is just one possible implementation of such a button and the actual implementation is determined entirely by the web page author. The only requirement is that the function "vblShowToolBar()" is called if the user wants to activate Vishbar Lite toolbar. DISPLAYING THE TOOLBAR

The Vishbar Lite toolbar is displayed by executing the function "vblShowToolBar()" in a web page that includes the "VishBarLite.js" script. This function determines the correct version of the annotation scripts to download using standard web browser detection methods and then includes the appropriate script in the calling web page using the browser's Document Object Model (DOM) functions. The toolbar itself is created using standard HTML and is a "DIV" element that uses images downloaded from the host web site to represent buttons. These buttons enable the execution of computer instruction code that implements functions in JavaScript using the standard OnClick JavaScript event. The toolbar also includes a reference to a Java applet that provides much of the annotation, saving and e-mailing functionality. CREATING ANNOTATIONS In preferred embodiments of the invention all annotations created by the

Vishbar Lite toolbar are restricted to use of standard HTML. This ensures that all annotations effected by the toolbar can be displayed by a web browser without requiring any additional computer instructions code or any modification to standard Web Browser software applications. In this respect, the display of annotations may be effected entirely by the web browser.

Creating an annotation is initiated by the user selecting a section of the web page with the mouse cursor and then selecting the appropriate button in the Vishbar Lite toolbar. This action initiates a JavaScript function that obtains the selection by using the DOM (selection. createRange()) which may require iterating through multiple HTML frames. The HTML code that defines the selection is retrieved from the DOM and passed to a function within the toolbar's Java applet, which returns the annotated HTML. The HTML that the user selected is replaced with the annotated HTML using the DOM's pasteHTML method.

The Java applet within the Vishbar Lite toolbar creates annotated HTML by parsing the original HTML string looking for any tags inside the string that might conflict with the annotation. The applet then places annotation tags at the ends of the string and at any point where a conflict might occur. An example of a conflicting tag is a table cell (TD) and the resultant annotation would be as follows:

<TABLExTRxTD>some <COMMENT id=HighlightMarker SEQ= " 16001 " OWNER= " VISHBAR " MARKER= " START" > < /COMMENT> < B onmouseover= "vblDisplayAnnotToolbar ( document, event . clientX, event . clientY, 16001, 'hold ' , 'B ' ,

' vblBold . gif ) " onmouseout= "gAnnotBarLocked = true A' SEQ= " 16001 " OWNER= "VISHBAR">text</BxTOxB onmouseover= "vblDisplayAnnotToolbar ( document, event . clientX, event . clientY, 16001, 'bold ' , 'B ' , ' vblBold. gif ) " onmouseout= "gAnnotBarLocked = true,- " SEQ= " 16001 " OWJER= " VI SHBAR"> some more</B>< COMMENT id=HighlightMarker SEQ= "16001 " OWNER= " VISHBAR" MARKER= "END"x/COMMENT> t ext < /TRx/ TABLE >

The above example shows a "start" comment and an "end" comment that encapsulate the annotation and allow the Vishbar Lite toolbar to parse the HTML document to find annotations if they require modifications. It also shows a "B" tag that indicates to the web browser that the text should be bolded. The "B" tag also has a sequence number that links it to the encapsulating comments and some event handlers that display a small toolbar to allow annotation changes when the user places the mouse cursor over the annotation. In this instance, there are two "B" tags for this one annotation as the Vishbar Lite Java applet's rules indicate that a bold annotation cannot cross a table cell boundary ("TD" tag) unless it is divided into two tags.

FADING PORTIONS OF A DOCUMENT

De-emphasis of portions of an HTML page is achieved by application of a Microsoft HTML filter and more specifically, an Alpha filter with an opacity setting. Portions of a document to be faded are spanned by an HTML element with the filter applied, as follows:

<FONT STYLE='display: inline-block'; FILTER='Alpha(opacity=0-100)' id=FadeFont OWNER=VISHBAR'> "This text represents the portion of the document to be faded. This can consist of text, html or a combination of both. It should be noted that any valid HTML can be faded in this way." </FONT>

It should also be noted that the display of this portion of the document has been set to inline block. This is required to force the element to take part in the flow (display process) of the page.

In the opacity setting of the example, the range of possible values is shown. Ordinarily, an individual setting for this value would be a number between

0 (completely opaque) and 100 (unchanged from un-spanned text). The 'id' and 'owner' attributes are used to ensure that un-fading the document removes only those elements added as part of the fade process.

MODIFICATION OF BACKGROUND ATTRIBUTES OF FADED PORTIONS OF A DOCUMENT

HTML elements with an explicitly set background colour (ie the bgColor attribute is set) or a value of "non-white" within a document portion to be faded are modified. The bgColor of these elements is modified according to the following equations:

IRed = IRed - ((IRed-IBodyRed)*(IFade)/100); IGreen= IGreen - ((IGreen-IBodyGreen)*(IFade)/100); and Blue = IBIue - ((IBIue-IBodyBlue)*(IFade)/100); where:

IRed - red component of elements background colour;

IGreen - green component of elements background colour; IBIue - blue component of elements background colour;

IBodyRed - red component of documents background colour; IBodyGreen - green component of documents background colour; IBodyBlue - blue component of documents background colour; and IFade - opacity level set as the alpha filter of faded portions of the document, as described above. The old values for the background colour are stored as an attribute of the HTML element to enable restoration to the original document state if the user or a subsequent viewer elects to deactivate the fade annotation. EXCLUSION OF PORTIONS OF A DOCUMENT FROM THE APPLICATION OF A FADE ANNOTATION

Material to be excluded from a fade annotation is selected by the user in a standard mouse or keyboard highlighting operation and then annotated with Vishbar Emphasis. Programmatic determination of a user's selection is achieved using the IHTMLSelectionObject DOM interface.

Annotation of a section of a document places a <COMMENT> HTML element at the beginning and end of the selection. These elements are added when the user performs an annotation. An annotation is performed when a user has a portion of the document selected and presses one of the annotation buttons on the Vishbar.

Elements are added to the document using the DOM. US officials <COMMENT id-AnnotationType MARKER*" START" SEQ="16001" OWNER="VISHBAR"></COMMENT>be\ieve the perpetrators of the deadly weekend car-bombing on the Indonesian resort island of Bali had foreign help and predict <COMMENT id= AnnotationType MARKER- 'END" SEQ-"16001 " OWNER="VISHBAR"></COMMENT>

The <COMMENT> elements mark the beginning and end of an area to be excluded from the fade process. The 'id', 'seq' and 'owner' attributes are used to ensure that irrespective of other document content the beginning and end of any given selection can always be identified.

APPLICATION OF THE FADE ANNOTATION TO A DOCUMENT

When a user elects to fade a document, the fade annotation is applied to all portions of the document not previously annotated by the user. This is achieved by iterating through the document's HTML elements (using the IMarkupServices and IMarkupPointer DOM interfaces) and spanning sections of the document with tags or elements identifying the portions of the document to be faded. An initial opening fade element is added after the beginning of the HTML documents body element. When a block element is reached in the iteration process, the current fade element is closed immediately before the end of the block, and a new element is begun immediately after the beginning of the block. Some standard block elements are TABLE, DIV, SPAN, and FONT elements. Any portion of the document identified as annotated is excluded from the fade process. An annotated section of the document is spanned by an opening <COMMENT> element and its matching closing <COMMENT> element. The exclusion from the fade process is achieved by closing the currently open fade element before the starting comment, and beginning a new fade element after the end comment element.

As part of the iteration process, elements are tested for the bgColor attribute. If this attribute is located, the background attributes are modified as previously described. DEACTIVATING THE FADE ANNOTATION TO A DOCUMENT With the Vishbar toolbar active, the document is searched for elements added as part of the fade process (identified with the DOM using the ID and OWNER attributes). These elements are then removed. These actions are achieved using the DOM. The original background colour of modified elements is restored using the values stored at the time of applying the fade annotation. When the Vishbar toolbar is not active, elements added as part of the application of a fade annotation (identified with the DOM using the ID and OWNER attributes) have their Alpha (Opacity) style attribute modified to be 100 (not opaque at all). This is achieved using Java script inserted by the Vishbar toolbar when a page is persisted. APPLICATION OF THE ANNOTATIONS IN THE FORM OF GRAPHICAL CONSTRUCTS TO PORTIONS OF A DOCUMENT Paragraph Annotation

In the preferred embodiment, when annotations in the form of graphical constructs are applied to portions of the document they are applied to portions of text forming an individual paragraph.

The portions of a document to which a paragraph annotation is to be applied is selected from a document using a standard mouse or keyboard highlighting operation and is retrieved via computer instruction code using the IHTMLSelectionObject DOM interface. The paragraph annotation is applied when a user selects the appropriate button on the Vishbar toolbar. HTML paragraph representation

The user's content selection is spanned with a <SPAN> HTML element in addition to the <COMMENT> elements previously described. Presently, the HTML standard only inherently supports vertical bar representations in an HTML document. However, in the preferred embodiment of the invention, other forms of graphical construct annotations are implemented by defining binary behaviours for paragraphs in an HTML document. Standard HTML style attributes used to effect the paragraph annotation functionality as follows: PADDING-LEFT: the left offset of the annotated text from its un-annotated location i.e. the amount the spanned content is shifted to the right. Can be modified by the user using the properties box attached to the spanned content with the paragraph binary behaviour.

BORDER-LEFT-COLOR: the colour of the vertical bar displayed to the left of the spanned content. Can be modified by the user using the properties box attached to the spanned content with the paragraph binary behaviour.

BORDER-LEFT-STYLE: this static attribute is always set to solid.

BORDER-LEFT-WIDTH: this determines the width of the vertical bar displayed to the left of the spanned content. Can be modified by the user using the properties box attached to the spanned content with the paragraph binary behaviour.

It should be noted that changes made using the binary behaviour properties box are directly reflected in the HTML at the time the change is made. Paragraph Span:

<SPAN id=ParagraphSpan SEQ="16001" OWNER="VISHBAR" STYLE="DISPLAY: inline-block; BORDER-LEFT-COLOR: Purple ; BORDER- LEFT-WIDTH: 10 ; BORDER-LEFT-STYLE: solid ; PADDING-LEFT: 20 " > "This text represents the content to which the paragraph behaviour will apply and can consist of text, html or a combination of both." </SPAN>

As before, the 'id', 'SEQ' and 'OWNER' attributes are used to ensure that the element inserted by Vishbar can be identified regardless of other document content, even if this content has similar or even identical functionality. Graphical Construct Annotations other than Vertical Bar

In the preferred embodiment, paragraph binary behaviour is implemented using Microsoft rendering behaviour. In this respect, a binary behaviour allows behaviour generated in C++ to be attached to an HTML element. The attachment is made with the following HTML, placed immediately before the end of the

<BODY> element of the affected document:

Paragraph Behavior span: <SPAN id=ParagraphBehavior style="DISPLAY: block; BEHAVIOR: url(#ParagraphBehavior); POSITION: absolute" SEQ="16001" OWNER="VISHBAR"> </SPAN>

The binary paragraph behaviour is displayed only in browsers in which the Vishbar is active.

In the preferred embodiment, there are at least three styles of paragraph annotation available when using the paragraph binary behaviour, namely:

The standard vertical bar displayed to the left of the right offset selection; An ellipse drawn around the selection; and A rectangle drawn around the selection.

When a page of a document with the paragraph annotation is displayed in a Web Browser with the Vishbar active, the rendering of the vertical bar, the ellipse or the rectangle is performed by the behaviour. This is achieved using the

Microsoft Graphics Device Interface drawing facilities. The coordinates at which to draw a graphical construct are relative to the location of the HTML paragraph span element which is determined using the DOM.

Changes to the paragraph properties are achieved from the binary behaviour using a properties dialog that can be displayed to a user as part of the mouse over interaction with the paragraph span. As noted previously, changes that can be effected in the paragraph span's HTML style are modified directly in the HTML. Changes made to the ellipse and rectangle paragraph annotations

(which are rendered by the binary behaviour and require Vishbar to be active in order to display the annotation in a browser view) are stored as part of the ParagraphBehavior span. For example, a user may modify the width or colour of the ellipse to be drawn. This change will immediately affect the display of the paragraph annotation and will be stored as an attribute of the paragraph span.

The modifiable attributes of a graphical construct annotation to a paragraph in an

HTML document include: - The width of vertical bar, ellipse or rectangle;

The left offset (vertical bar annotation only);

The Bar width (vertical bar annotation only); and

Colour (Paragraph type (bar, ellipse or rectangle)). Example of Ellipse Graphical Construct (Alternative Method) In another embodiment, graphical construct annotations are applied by placing an HTML image over the paragraph for annotation.

An example of the application of an ellipse graphical construct to a paragraph in an HTML document using this alternative approach is provided as follows: <DIV id=FloatingEllipse onmouseover="vblDisplayAnnotToolbar ( document, event .clientX, event .clientY, 16002, 'circle paragraph', 'FONT', 'vblEllipse.gif, null,

'vblRemoveCircleParagrap (16002) ' ,

'vblEllipseColourExtension' )" style="Z-INDEX: 250; LEFT: 147px; VISIBILITY: visible; WIDTH: 491px; POSITION: absolute; TOP: 26Opx; HEIGHT: 78px" onmouseout="gAnnotBarLocked = true;" SEQ="16002"

VISHBAR_LITE= "Yes " xIMG id=FloatingEllipseImg style= " FILTER :

Light () Alpha (opacity=70) " height=78^*- src=" blCircleParagraph.gif" width=491 SEQ="16002"

ONFILTERCHANGE="vblRepositionEllipse( this ); vblLightObject ( this, 255, 0, 0, true );"></DIV> As will be noted, the annotated text is marked with start and end comments like other annotations. However, unlike other annotations, the ellipse is positioned by way of "DIV" element. The ellipse itself is an image that is downloaded from the host web site. It is scaled so that it encircles the annotated text and is coloured by a light filter. The light filter may not be available on some browsers and in this case different coloured images would be downloaded from the host web site each time the colour of the ellipse is altered.

The correct scale and position for the image are determined by locating the comment elements that encapsulate the annotation and then using the DOM to create a text range between the comments. The position and size of that text range is relatively easily determined using the DOM. Whenever the document window is resized, the position and scale of the ellipse must be recalculated. Document window resizing is detected using standard JavaScript events. Other Document Annotations In particularly preferred embodiments, the application of the fade annotation to portions of a document vary in the extent to which the portions of the document are faded throughout the document. In particular, increasing the opacity of faded portions depending upon the distance a portion of document occurs from a user annotation (other than fade) is a particularly useful method of providing a viewer with the ability to view portions of the document in the immediate vicinity of an annotated portion of the document, thus providing context for the annotation, whilst de-emphasising portions that are a significant distance from the annotation. This method may be applied at the time of "fading" a document subsequent to selecting portions of the document that should not be faded. To implement this method, the DOM is used to identify the location of the various paragraphs throughout a document and hence the distance that paragraphs reside from an annotated paragraph.

In another embodiment, once various paragraphs are annotated, the distance between those annotated paragraphs in a visual display of a document to a user/viewer is reduced to enable the user/viewer to display annotated paragraphs in a smaller viewing area on a visual display. To effect this function, the DOM is used to determine the relative locations of annotated paragraphs throughout a document and the paragraphs residing between annotated paragraphs are not displayed. For example:

<SPAN style = 'DISPLAY:NONE'> This content will be invisible to the user. The contents of this span would be collapsed. In other words, content immediately before and after would be contiguous.

</SPAN> Structure of an HTML Document including Tagged Annotations Figure 20 provides a diagrammatic representation of the structure of an

HTML document with faded elements. In this respect, faded content is identified using HTML tags and application specific extensions. The insertion of tags in an HTML document in order to identify those portions of the document to be faded should not unduly impact the natural formatting of the document. Other applications such as Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat may also use the insertion of similar formatting objects or alternatively, may use a graphical overlay to identify the portions of the Word or Acrobat document to be faded. In the event that a document type does not support varying opacity levels by means of formatting tags, fading portions of the document are implemented by application of a graphical mask that would be conceptually laid over the visual display of the document. In this instance, the graphical mask contains holes, or apertures, to display un-faded content and partially obscures portions of the document where the graphical mask did not contain a hole or aperture.

Figures 21 and 22 provide a diagrammatic representation of the primary functional components of display and edit functions of a system according to the present invention.

In another aspect of the invention, insertion of relevant information dynamically as annotated documents are transmitted to and from users is provided. In this respect, in a preferred embodiment, documents to which user annotations have been applied are intercepted by an intermediary system, which identifies the portions of the document to which annotations have been applied and determines from those annotations information relating to information that the user considers to be important about that document. From this analysis, the intermediary system may determine characteristics of the user that relate to the likelihood of the user purchasing particular goods and/or services. Having determined the portions of the document that are considered important to the user, the intermediary system analyses the information content of those portions and attempts to select information that would be considered relevant by the user and or their intended recipients. Preferably, having identified additional relevant information, the intermediary system associates that additional information with the annotated document and subsequently transmits the document and the associated information to its originally intended destination.

For example, a user reading and annotating a document about digital music could include annotations about a well known digital music provider and particular styles of music available from that provider. In this instance, the intermediary system analyses the information content of the annotations and deduces broader concepts relating to the music provider and the styles of music that form the subject of the user's annotations. Further, the intermediary system considers prior annotations, concepts and searches initiated by the user in its attempt to identify potential purchasing characteristics of the user. Based upon deduced characteristics, the intermediary system may identify highly relevant and targeted advertising information as a result of the analysis of user annotations. The provision of highly relevant and targeted advertising material to the receiver of an annotated document is more likely to induce a purchase.

This aspect of the invention is particularly advantageous for the dynamic insertion of advertising material which may be included in an annotated document prior to the transmission of that annotated document to the user and/or intended recipients. In this respect, it is particularly preferred that the intermediary system be provided with the facility to designate the inserted advertising material as a portion of the annotated document to which further annotations cannot be applied. As should be recognized by a person skilled in the art, the various aspects of the present invention may be used for a range of purposes including the advancement of communication via electronic mail. For example, a consumer of information that receives a document from another source can preserve the context of their interest in that document by annotating important sections of the document and storing the document for future reference. At a later date, upon reviewing the annotated document, the consumer is able to recall the reason for their interest at the time of receiving and saving the document. If stored electronically, the document may be viewed in its un-annotated state so that the consumer may review the document in the form that it was originally generated.

In enhancing electronic communication, the user may review a document and select various portions of the document for emphasizing. If the annotated document is considered by the user to be of relevance to other users, the user reviewing of the document may transmit the annotated copy of the document thus increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of communication therebetween. It is particularly advantageous for the original author of a document to be provided with the facility to designate portions of the document that cannot be further annotated by users. Additionally, it is also advantageous that recipients of annotated documents be provided with the ability to selectively deactivate and/or modify annotations applied by other users to the original document.

As the present invention may be embodied in several forms without departing from the spirit of the essential characteristics of the invention, it should be understood that the above described embodiments are not to limit the present invention unless otherwise specified, but rather should be construed broadly within the spirit and scope of the invention as defined in the appended claims. Various modifications and equivalent arrangements are intended to be included within the spirit and scope of the invention and appended claims.

Claims

CLAIMS:

1. A method of annotating a document to emphasize portions thereof including the steps of: selecting portions of the document to be emphasized; and fading the visual representation of the non-selected portions of the document.

2. A method according to claim 1 wherein the step of selecting portions of the document includes the application of annotations to those portions.

3. A method according to claim 2 wherein the annotation style applied to a portion of text includes any one of the following annotation styles: altering the font size; altering the font type; altering the font representation; highlighting; under lining; commenting; hyper-linking; bracketing; or surrounding with a graphical construct.

4. A method according to any one of the preceding claims wherein the method includes the step of selecting the extent of fading the visual representation of non-selected portions of the document.

5. A method of annotating a document to emphasise portions thereof including the steps of: selecting portions of the document to be emphasised; and including a graphical construct in the visual representation of the document that identifies the portion of the document to be emphasised.

6. A method according to claim 5 wherein the graphical construct is a substantially vertical bar alongside the portion of the document selected to be emphasised.

7. A method according to claim 6 wherein the inclusion of the graphical construct of a substantially vertical bar causes the visual representation of the portion of the document emphasised by the vertical bar to be displaced and resized.

8. A method according to claim 7 where the re-sizing and displacement of the portion of the document is sufficient to enable the substantially vertical bar to reside within the nominal boundary of the visual representation of the contents of the document.

9. A method according to claim 5 wherein the graphical construct is a substantially elliptical boundary that is sized to substantially surround the visual representation of the portion of the document to be emphasised.

10. A method according to claim 5 wherein the graphical construct is a substantially rectangular boundary that is sized to substantially surround the visual representation of the portion of the document to be emphasised.

11. A method according to any one of the preceding claims wherein the method includes the step of saving data representative of the document in its annotated state.

12. A method according to any one of the preceding claims wherein the method includes the step of transmitting data representative of the document in its annotated state over a communications network.

13. A method according to claim 12 wherein the data representative of the document in its annotated state is transmitted as an attachment to an electronic mail message.

14. A method according to claims 11 or 12 wherein the data representative of the document in its annotated state is stored in non-volatile memory that is accessible to at least one user of the communications network.

15. A method according to any one of claims 11 to 14 wherein the method includes the step of obtaining a visual representation of the document in its annotated state from the data and presenting the visual representation to a viewer.

16. A method according to claim 15 including the step of the viewer of the document in its annotated state altering the style of at least one annotation to an alternative style.

17. A method according to either claims 11 to 16 including the step of analysing the document and replacing at least one style of annotation with an alternative style of annotation according to pre-defined preferences.

18. A method according to any one of claims 11 to 17 when dependent from any one of claims 1 to 4 wherein the method includes the step of the recipient selecting the extent to which the representation of selected portions in the document are faded.

19. A method according to any one of the preceding claims wherein the method includes the step of a viewer selectively deactivating annotations.

20. A method according to claim 19 wherein the selective deactivation of annotations to a document occurs in strict or reverse chronological order of the application of the annotations.

21. A method according to any one of the preceding claims wherein the method includes the step of a viewer deactivating all annotations to the original document.

22. A method according to claim 21 wherein having deactivated all annotations to the original document a viewer is presented with a view of the annotated document thus enabling the viewer to compare the original and annotated documents.

23. A method according to any one of the preceding claims wherein annotations cannot be applied to at least one portion of a document.

24. A method according to any one of the preceding claims wherein at least one portion of a document remains represented in its original form despite the application of annotations to other portions of the document.

25. A method according to either claim 23 or 24 wherein the at least one portion of the document includes advertising information.

26. A method according to any one of claims 1 to 4 wherein the extent to which a portion of a document is faded is variable throughout the document.

27. A method according to claim 26 wherein the method includes the step of a user selecting the variation of fading of portions throughout the document.

28. A method according to claim 26 wherein the variation of the extent of fading is dependent upon the distance of the non-selected portion of the document from a portion of the document selected to be emphasized.

29. A method according to any one of the preceding claims wherein the method includes the step of rearranging the emphasized portions of the document to bring those portions into closer proximity to each other.

30. A system for annotating a document to emphasize portions thereof including: a selection means to select at least one portion of the document to be emphasized; and a means to include identifiers in the document indicating the non-selected portions such that fading of the visual representation of those non-selected portions occurs when the document is subsequently displayed to a viewer.

31. A system for annotating a document to emphasize portions thereof including: a means to select at least one portion of the document to be emphasized; and a means to include identifiers in the document indicating that portion of the document in which a graphical construct will be represented in a visual display of the document.

32. A system for annotating a document to emphasise portions thereof including: a selection means to select at least one portion of the document to be emphasised; and a means to generate an overlay for the document, the overlay formed such that, in use, the overlay allows selected portions of the document to be displayed visually without any alteration to the representation thereof and causing non- selected portions to be displayed with a faded appearance.

33. A system according to claim 31 wherein the graphical construct is a substantially vertical bar that is displayed alongside the portion of the document to be emphasised in a visual display of the document.

34. A system according to claim 31 wherein the graphical construct is a substantially elliptical boundary that is sized to substantially surround the portion of the document to be emphasised in a visual display of the document.

35. A system according to claim 31 wherein the graphical construct is a substantially rectangular boundary that is sized to substantially surround the portion of the document to be emphasised in a visual display of the document.

36. A method of enabling a user to annotate a document, such that portions thereof may be emphasized, the method including the steps of: receiving a copy request for a document from a user's host system identifying the document that the user has selected to copy; transmitting to the user a viewable representation of the document; and transmitting computer instruction code for execution on the user's host system, the computer instruction code providing the user with the facility to effect annotations to the copy of the document on the user's host system.

37. A method according to claim 36 wherein the computer instruction code provides the user with any one or more of the following facilities: to save an electronic copy of the annotated document; to transmit an electronic representation of an annotated document to a viewer by electronic mail; to prevent applied annotations from being de-activated from at least one portion of the document.

38. A system for enabling a user to annotate a document, such that portions thereof may be emphasized, the system including: a means to receive a copy request for a document from a user's host system; a means to identify the document that the user has selected to copy; and a means to transmit to the user a viewable representation of the document; wherein the means to transmit a viewable representation of the document also transmits computer instruction code for execution on the user's host system, the computer instruction code providing the facility for the user to effect annotations to the copy of the document on the user's host system.

39. A method of selecting relevant information to associate with a document that is being transmitted over a communications network to a viewer the method including the steps of: receiving the document; analyzing the document to determine the information content of the document; identifying relevant information for association with the document based upon the information content of the document; and associating the relevant information with the document.

40. A method according to claim 39 wherein the document has been annotated and the method includes the steps of: analyzing the document to determine the annotated portions; analyzing the annotated portions to determine the information content of those portions; and locating relevant information for association with the document with respect to the information in the annotated portions.

41. A method according to either claim 39 or 40 wherein the relevant information is advertising information.

42. A method according to either claim 39, 40 or 41 wherein relevant information is associated with the document by including the relevant information in the document.

43. A method according to any one of claims 39 to 42 wherein associated relevant information is prevented from being subsequently annotated by a recipient.

44. A method according to any one of claims 39 to 43 wherein the document that has been annotated is transmitted over a communications network as part of an electronic mail message.

45. Computer instruction code embodied in a non-volatile memory means said computer instruction code including instructions causing the execution of the method steps of any one of claims 1 to 29, 36, 37 or 39 to 44.

46. A document generated by the execution of the method steps of any one of claims 1 to 29, 36, 37 or 39 to 44.

47. A method according to any one of claims 5 to 10 including the method steps of associating textual comments with the graphical construct, said textual comments appearing in a visual representation of the annotated document.

48. A method according to any one of claims 11 to 29 when dependent from any one of claims 5 to 10 including the method steps of associating textual comments with the graphical construct, said textual comments appearing in a visual representation of the annotated document.

49. A system according to any one of claims 31 , 33, 34 or 35 including a means to generate and associate textual comments with graphical constructs.