Reference Works Viewer

"Word by Mouse"

The refboox is a viewer for dictionaries, encyclopedias, chronologies, terminologies, topic ontologies and other kinds of electronic publications. It can be used for instant lookup - the user selects text in a window with the mouse, and the refboox viewer looks it up.

Some keywords
   • Low cost concept with modularized prices
   • Works both online on the Internet and offline
   • Instant lookup from virtually any Windows program
   • Design flexibility with possibilites for company branding
   • Based on standard web technologies

Typical content
The refboox viewer is designed as a utility for presenting content from all kinds of reference material. Typical content for display are above all dictionaries and word lists, provided by a publisher, but a company with correspondence in foreign languages can benefit from term banks for inhouse use - i.e. in combination with general dictionaries.

Small utility
The viewer is designed as a utility, which means that it is a small window somewehere on the screen for rapid lookups while the user is doing other activities (writing with a word processor or browsing the Internet) as his or her main activity.

Instant Mode
Instant Mode means that the user only has to select text by double-clicking or stretch-marking text with the mouse to look up. The user can switch Instant Mode on and off. As the solution is based on user-selected text, it is less "nagging" than systems based on hovering text.

Context awareness
When in Instant Mode, the refboox responds according to the context of the selected text which is sent to it. When Text origins from a web page, the normal behaviour might be to look up in a dictionary. And when the text arrives from a text editor with an open HTML document, it might look up in an HTML reference instead. There are a number of other contexts and situations where the viewer can react in diverse ways. And again; the user will be able to turn behaviour on and off.

The two illustrations to the right show two kinds of response to incoming search criteria. The window on the top has been reacting on a word arriving from an Internet browser, and it has been assumed being a Danish word. The reponse below this, is a response to input from a text editor with an HTML document.

Internet front-end
As the refboox viewer can act as a dedicated browser, it can be used as an alternative front end for reference works already published on the Internet. This means that existing dictionaries on the web can be channeled throught the refboox viewer with extended functionality - first of all Instant Mode.

Design flexibility
Below you can see a couple of design suggestions. To design and brand your publications is quite simple, and a design handbook will be available. Please observe that the example to the left has interpreted the incoming string as a mail address and has looked this up in a directory. The next example contains an animation. Such elements can be implemented by well known Internet technologies. The last example is a prototype for a termbank where the refboox viewer is a front-end client on a database which is also available through a standard web browser. bergset.dk also made the database, where three searches are performed subsequently: Search for perfect match within the headword elements, followed by partial hits among headwords, and finally partial hits within the target language definitions.

Copy features
The refboox viewer has two ways of copying parts of text from its content, and the user can switch between them. The basic functionality is to copy to the clipboard, as most Windows programmes do. The second way is to copy directly into the program who provoked the lookup. For instance, if the user has doubleclicked a word and the viewer has looked it up in a thesaurus, the user can replace the original word by one single click in the refboox viewer.

What you should to
Please feel free to ask for an offer! What is described here is only the client (front end viewer) for a server database, and it can be put on top of your search database already published on Internet as an altenrative user interface, and this could be an attractive download from your website. However, bergset.dk will of course handle a total delivery of both client and server elements of a publication. And the system also works in a pure offline environment, it is a hybrid in this respect, and is intended as The lookup tool for the broadband era. Any questions? Please do not hesitate to use the following contact informations:

Mail Address
   info@bergset.dk
Telephone
   +45 29 64 80 56