When a reader requests a page, they will receive the page with a few
additions. Along the top of the page will be three buttons: "Add",
"Search" and "Help". Any existing annotations will be marked with
small arrows on either side of the annotated text.
yellow arrows
designate an old annotation 
red arrows
designate annotations that are new since your last visit to this
page 
green arrows
mark annotations that have new replies since your last visit to
this page
If the reader
clicks on the "Add" button, a pop-up window will
appear to add a new annotation. In
addition, if the reader happens to click on "Add"
while the Add window is already open, there will
still be only one pop-up window. The window will
simply pop to the front and load the "Add an
Annotation" page. Since the
program already has the reader's name and email
address, the only information the client needs to
supply is:
For the permissions, annotations can be public, private or semi-private. If the client chooses semi-private, he/she must also choose the group(s) that have access to the annotation.
There is also an option to include HTML in the text of the annotation. For instance, the author may wish to add links or list elements. They can do this by checking the "Treat text as HTML" box.
If the reader clicks on the arrow, a new window appears displaying the annotation. The Annotation window has a top and bottom frame. In the top section, the original annotation is displayed with buttons to reply to the annotation or close the window. If the reader chooses to reply to the annotation, the window will display a modified "Add Annotation" page with text fields for the title and text of the reply. When the client has submitted the reply, the window displays this new annotation.
In some cases, there is a third button displayed in the top frame of the Annotation window. This is the delete button. Only the author of the annotation and the system administrator have permission to delete an annotation. This is the only time this button appears. In addition, when the delete button is pressed, if there are any replies to the annotation, the system will not let the client delete it until all replies have been deleted.
In the bottom of the Annotation window is a collapsible reply tree (See Figure 3). An arrow pointing to the right means there are replies to that annotation, and an arrow pointing down means the replies are already shown. To view a reply, the reader selects the title of that reply in the tree. The text of the reply will be displayed in the top frame, replacing the original annotation.
