FindItAll Screen Shots

FindItAll is a productivity tool developed by Grasp Information Corporation from mid-1996 through early 1997. FindItAll, desgned for use "during the search", is an excerpt manager for search results. It sorts and displays URLs as well as excerpts (HTML snippets) in a user-configurable structure, and runs agents on the user's behalf, for example, visiting a Web page to determine if it still exists and still contains a match to the search query. Smart excerpts are constructed from a Web page, showing a range of content surrounding each query match while preserving the formatting, graphics and hot links of the original HTML source.

FindItAll automatically categorizes and places these excerpts into a user-defined hierarchy, bringing structure and order to the complexity of search results, while enhancing the understanding of the user. FindItAll's query refinement utilizes a graphical user interface where drag-and-drop operations avoid the usual confusion of AND, NOT and OR in Boolean searches. FindItAll will also review search results and actually suggest useful categories that discriminate features of the subject domain. In addition, templates can utilized to perform consistent searching across a series of related queries.The overall result of using FindItAll is vastly improved efficiency during the search. The valuable excerpts thus identified can be easily stored into the knowledgebase of KnowItAll, Grasp's knowledge management product.

[FndItAll was constructed at Grasp Information Corporation, with the version shown here around March 1997, by Paul Pangaro (CTO), Dave Shute (EVP and Founder), and Mike Travers (Developer/Consultant); Peter Paine wrote the high-performance substrate for UI and storage; Dennis Doughty (VP Engineering) and Charles Morehead (Sen. Engineer) were critical members of the Grasp team. Grasp Information was formerly found at www.grasp.com.]

1. Search Results Display on "Cabo San Lucas"

The user wishes to learn something about a place called Cabo San Lucas.

The user has submitted the query "Cabo San Lucas" and the initial results are displayed by FindItAll to the right of the browser, below. Each entry represents a single URL. The display is created entry-by-entry in real time, in the priority order returned by the search engine. In a process that runs in parallel to additional entries being displayed and the user's interactions, agents are sent out to the Web to determine the status of the URL, and the color of each entry is changed accordingly:

  • Red means that the page is "not found" (i.e., the page is no longer available and the search engine's index is out of date).
  • Yellow means that the page is found but no match to the search query exists on the page (i.e., the page has changed since it was indexed by the search engine).
  • Green means that the page is found and a match to the search query exists on the page.

    • The user can submit commands at any time without waiting. By clicking on an entry on the right, the user can choose to see the entire page, or, more usefully, to see a section of the page that contains the search query, with that search string highlighted (see screenshot below). If there are more than one match to the query, each one is shown, separated by short, fat rules (as below).

     

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