Has anyone ever seen context links within the body of an online article that offers a little flyout box when you mouse over a link?

For example, you are reading a news article, and there is a word hyperlinked in the story. When you mouse over it, there is a little flyout window that pops up near your mouse. Sometimes in them, you will see a definition of that word, or more information. Other times, the flyout offers a link for more information on that particular word.

I have found a company (Kontera) that sort of does this. You drop in some Javascript in your site, and the script will automatically pick some key words out of your article. From there, it automatically creates the text links. The only problem is that the links they create are all paid avertisements.

Does anyone know if there are similar services that offer just "More Information" on a linked word. Or does anyone know of a script/program that would allow the publisher to create these flyout boxes?

They are kinda cool I think in that they offer a quick bit of information. It makes your articles appear more dynamic. I run a major broadcast network news site, and I am investigating this for our company.

It's simple enough script to do with some server side code to feed the information (AJAX stuff)

Originally Posted by chrishirst

It's simple enough script to do with some server side code to feed the information (AJAX stuff)

But where can I see this script or get a copy?

no idea, can't say I've ever looked for one, It's an even simpler task to write a replace function in server-side code as the page is created.
Create a CSS styled span around the word with a onmouseover/onmouseout on the container to show a hidden floating <div> with the text in it at the mouse co-ords and job done. Much simpler than messing around parsing the page with javascript and possible cross-browser issues.