A method for the dynamic presentation of the contents of a plurality of
documents on a display is disclosed. The method comprises receiving a
plurality of documents and providing a plurality of topically rich capsule
overviews corresponding to the plurality of documents. The method also
includes dynamically delivering document content encapsulated in the
plurality of capsule overviews. In so doing, the method in accordance with
the present invention can present thematic capsule overviews of the
documents to users. The capsule overviews, delivered in a variety of
dynamic presentation modes, allow the user to quickly get a sense of what
a document is about, and decide whether they want to read it in more
detail. In a preferred embodiment, the capsule overviews include a
containment hierarchy which relates the different information levels in a
document together, and which includes a collection of highly salient topic
stamps embedded in layers of progressively richer and more informative
contextualized text fragments. The novel presentation metaphors which the
invention utilizes are based on notions of temporal typography, in
particular for exploiting the interactions between form and content.