How Does It Work?

The Bookmark

The link you bookmark from SharedCopy is more accurately known as a bookmarklet.

Book-mark-let : a small Javascript program stored as a URL

When you click on the SharedCopy bookmarklet, users are not brought to another webpage (like what normal bookmark does). Instead, a little script is run and SharedCopy becomes integrated into the current webpage that is viewed by the user.

Sticky-notes, Lines & Circles

By using the power of Javascript and DOM manipulation afforded by modern browsers, SharedCopy provides simple-to-use buttons that empowers users to modify any webpage they browse.

The effect is much like how web designers use their tools to modify and design webpages - except that, the SharedCopy tools can be used effectively by everyone without any technical know how!

Save!

All modifications done will be for nought unless the user clicks "Save". When the "Save" button is clicked, the modified webpage is then submitted to the SharedCopy server and saved into a database.

By doing this, SharedCopy has saved a copy of the webpage for you - along with any annotations you've made. This copy can be viewed by pointing the web browser to a new, uniquely-generated URL - at anytime, by anyone. The copy webpage will look identical to the original webpage - any referenced resource (e.g. pictures) will show up nicely in the copy.

Note that only the textual content of the webpage is stored at SharedCopy, whereas the referenced image (and etc) files are still coming directly from the original website.

Also, note that since the webpage is submitted to SharedCopy (instead of SharedCopy grabbing a copy herself), the original webpage does not need to be a publicly accessible webpage! This opens doors to pages like: webpages after logging into your account, https webpages, webpages in your office intranet, and even webpages on your local development machine!

Questions or Problems?

For more information, please consult the mailing list or reach us directly using the Contact Us form.