Using A.nnotate for web research

As well as PDF and Microsoft Word documents, you can also annotate web pages.

You can take a private "snapshot" of the page and add it to your account as a new document. After that everything works the same way as for other documents.

Making a snapshot by entering the web address

On the documents page, select "New web snapshot".

The snapshot dialog appears where you can enter the web address in the first slot.

As with other documents, the other parts are optional. You can add some notes about the page you are snapshotting and tags to help find it later.

When you are finished, click "Make snapshot" to add a copy of the page to your account. It should appear in the browser window in a few moments with the usual menu and controls at the top. You can then highlight text in the page to add new notes.

This way of taking web snapshots works with public web pages; password protected web pages can be annotated using the browser button described below.

Adding a browser button for taking snapshots

Instead of entering the web address each time, you can also add a button to the browser toolbar that automatically snapshots the page you are currently viewing and uploads it to your annotate account.

The button and full instructions for adding it can be found on the Help page when you are logged in.

The process for adding the button depends on what browser you are using. There are screenshot demonstrations for Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Using the browser button

Once you have added the browser button, you can press it to take a snapshot of the web page you are viewing. A box appears on the page and you can add optional notes and tags to help classify the page.

The snapshot is actually made when you click "Snap!".

You can also go to the document index instead with the "Index" button, so the browser button provides a quick way to get to your annotate account even if you do not want to take a snapshot.