There are 8 sections of the main screen, shown on the screenshot above and described below.
1. Title Bar - contains general information about the current search.
| • | the program - iMetaSearch. |
| • | the filename - ex. apache. |
| • | the current search - ex. apache. |
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 words or phrases 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. |
| • | click the Start Search button to start the search. |
Using the two buttons to the right of the Start Search button you can:
| • | click the Help Videos button to watch a video tutorial about using iMetaSearch. |
| • | click the Upgrade to Pro button to purchase the Pro version that lets you choose any combination of search engines (the free version is limited to Google) and any number of results (the free version is limited to 100 results). |
4. Groups of Results - each group represents a set of related results. Clicking a group checkbox shows related groups, words, and results. The slider control determines the number of groups.
5. Current Result - the Current Result shows the summary of the current result (just click on a result to make it current). 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. Extracted Words - contains all words and phrases that were extracted from the results. The slider control determines the number of words, based on how many results they appear in. Search 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 search word. Each word has 4 columns associated with it.
| • | First Column - the number of the word. |
| • | Mark Column - the checkbox that you click to mark this word or phrase. |
| • | Relevance Column - contains the relevance of the word. To use this column, first mark (by clicking its checkbox) a word, group, or result and relevances will be updated automatically. Clicking on the column header sorts all words by relevance. If a result that has been marked contains this word, the relevance bar for this word will be orange. |
| • | Words (xx showing) Column - contains the actual word or phrase. It also shows how many total words there are. Clicking on this column header sorts the words alphabetically. |
| • | Count Column - counts the number of results that the word appears in. By looking at popular words, you may discover some that would be useful to search on. |
7. Search Results - there is one row in this section for every search result. There are 8 columns associated with it.
| • | First Column - the number of the result. |
| • | Mark Column - the checkbox that you click to mark this result. |
| • | Relevance Column - this column contains the relevance of the result. Relevances are updated automatically whenever any groups, results, or words are marked. If the relevance column header is clicked, then results will be sorted by relevance. If a word that has been marked appears in the result, the relevance bar will be an orange color. |
| • | Group Column - contains the group number of the result. Initially results are sorted by group, and group boundaries are shown by alternating white and orange bands of color. Clicking on this column header sorts results by group. |
| • | Title (xx showing) 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 total results there are. |
| • | 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. |
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. |