Screen Layout
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imetasearch2-800x600
There are 8 sections of the main screen, numbered 1-8 on the screenshot above and described below.

1. Title Bar - contains general information about the current search.
·the name of the program - iMetaSearch,  
·the name of the current search - ex. chanute,  
·the number of results in the current search - ex. 53 results,  
·the number of words/phrases shown in the index - ex. 142 words/phrases.  
·and the search terms used during the search - ex. chanute  

2. Menu Bar - the menu bar contains the menu items for the program. All program actions can be controlled from the menu items and the menu items are described in detail in the menu reference section.

3. Search Bar - the search bar contains items that help you search more quickly. You can:

·type search terms into the edit box on the left side of the toolbar (put double quotes around phrases, ex, "supreme court"),  
·set the number of results (limit 10,000) to get in the search,  
·and then click the Search button to start the search.  

The two buttons to the right of the Search button give help on using iMetaSearch.

·Help Button - brings up this help file.  
·Video Tutorial - runs a short video tutorial on the features of iMetaSearch.  

4. Clusters - each cluster is a button that represents a group of results. The button caption describe the cluster. Clicking on a cluster marks the first result of that cluster, as well as showing related results by the length of their relevance bars. The slider control determines the number of clusters.

5. Current Result - the Current Result shows the full summary of the currently selected result. You can click on its links to send your browser there. You can also copy its text to the clipboard by dragging your mouse across the text to select it, and then pressing Ctrl-C.

6. Results - there is one row in this section for every search result. There are 8 columns associated with it.

·# Column - counts the results.  
·Relevance Column - this column contains the relevance of the result. Relevances are updated automatically whenever any results or words are marked. If the relevance column header is clicked, then results will be sorted by relevance. If a marked word appears in the result, the relevance bar will be red, instead of blue.  
·Cluster Column - contains the cluster number of the result. Initially results are sorted by cluster, and cluster boundaries are shown by alternating white and aqua bands of color. Clicking on this column header sorts results by cluster.  
·Results: <n> marked Column - contains the titles of all the results. Clicking on the column header will sort results by title. In addition, it keeps track of how many results are currently marked. The <n> means that there are currently n results marked.  
·URL Column - contains the URLs of all the results. Clicking on the column header will sort results by their URLs. Clicking on the URL link sends the browser to that web result.  
·Date Column - contains the date and time that the result was downloaded. Clicking on the column header sorts the results by date. This is useful if you have updated the search and want to separate the new results from the previous results, since the new results will have a later download date.  
·Engine Column - contains the name of the search engine that the result came from.  
·Rank Column - shows the rank of the result, for example 5 means the 5th result of that search engine.  

7. Index - the index contains all legal words and phrases that were extracted from all results. The slider control determines the number of index words, based on how many results they appear in. Legal index words must not appear in the StopWords.txt file and must have 2 or more characters. Phrases are listed if they start and end with a legal word. Each word has 4 columns associated with it.

·# Column - counts the words.  
·Relevance Column - contains the relevance of the word. To use this column, first mark some results or words, and relevances will be updated automatically. Clicking on the column header sorts all words by relevance. If a marked result contains this word, the relevance bar for this word will be red, otherwise it will be blue.  
·Words/Phrases: <n> marked Column - contains the actual word. It also shows how many words are currently marked. Clicking on this column header sorts the words alphabetically.  
·#Results Column - counts the number of results that the word appears in. Generally the search terms used are in the most results. By looking at other popular words, you may discover some would be useful search terms.  

8. Status Bar - shows two different kinds of information.

·If a search has just been performed, or has just been loaded - it shows how long various operations took in seconds.  
·If the mouse rolls over a link - it shows the URL of that link.