Annotating web pages with Textensor Notate

Notate lets you mark words or phrases in a web page and add notes or tags to them. You can keep notes private or share them within an annotation group. You can browse, sort and reply to notes on the Notate Server.

It is the on-line replacement for card indexes, highlighter pens, and notes in the margins of printed copies. It makes it simple to find and edit annotations, and to share them within selected groups.

Logging in

You need to register before you can save notes - creating an account only takes a few seconds. Your email address is used as the login name, so that you can get a password reminder emailed if needed. Click the 'notate' icon in the top right of this page to start.

Creating notes

Writing a note in the box and clicking save will create a note that is attached to the top of the page. Most notes apply to a particular part of the text: if you select a word or short section of text with the mouse then the note will be attached there. The selected text also becomes the subject of the note unless you choose to edit it.

Displaying notes

There are three styles of note display as selected by the first row of buttons. In "overlay" mode, the notes go in boxes above the text they refer to. These boxes can be dragged around to see the text underneath them. In "rhs" mode, the boxes go on the right hand side of the page, pushing the text out of the way. In "inline" mode, the text of the note is included in the page text itself.

You can hide all the notes with the "hide" button, and cycle through them one by one with the left and right arrows.

Tagging

As well as a subject and note text, a note can also have tags attached to it. These act like keywords to help locate notes in the index and to filter the display. You can type new tags into the text field, or click on tags in the area below to reuse a tag. The button at the right gives an alphabetical list of all tags used in a particular group of notes.

Indexing

All your notes can be seen on the notes index which provides a variety of ways of sorting and searching and displaying annotations. In particular there is an index view that provides a list of all the words that have been annotated and links to their occurrences. To add an index entry, you do not even need to write a note: just selecting a word or phrase in the page and clicking save will add it to the index.

In this way you can rapidly and easily build up a subject index of the pages you are viewing. Unlike bookmarks or indexes in books, the links in this index go to the exact place in the text where the word or phrase appears.

Snapshots

If the website you are viewing is "Notate enabled" then the notate icon will appear in the top right-hand corner. Clicking the icon starts the notepad. If the website is not "Notate enabled" you cannot annotate it in-place, but you can take a snapshot instead and annotate that.

To take snapshots, you need to add the Notate "Snap!" button to your browser, as explained on your account settings. Once it is installed, just press "Snap!" to take a snapshot of the page and start annotating.

Groups and Visibility

All annotations are private unless you choose to share them. When you register, you can create one or more "groups" to allow you to share annotations with friends or colleagues. You can also join groups set up by other users if they send you an invitation link.