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Merriam-Webster's WordClickTM Technology
For Webmasters

Visitors to your Web site are bound to come across a word that they are unfamiliar with or would like more information about. Merriam-Webster's WordClickTM technology allows you to turn every word of text on a Web page into an instant Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary lookup.

With WordClickTM activated on your pages, users can double-click on any word that is not already hyperlinked to perform a dictionary search for that word. Search results open in a new window on top of the current page. Try it! This page is WordClick-enabled!

And all you have to do as Webmaster is add a few snippets of code to your pages.

  1. Put the following JavaScript call in the <head> of your Web page. Each page that you want to enable with WordClickTM must have this script call in the <head>.

    The WordClickTM script is activated when your page loads, virtually linking every unlinked word on your page to its corresponding entry in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary.

  2. Put the following <div> tags around the page content where you would like WordClickTM activation to be visible to your users.

    WordClickTM is an exciting tool, but it will only be used if users know it is there. The above <div> tags mark your page content so that a custom WordClickTM cursor appears when a user mouses over this content.

    This is a valuable feature that makes your users aware of the powerful search technology that is available to them while allowing the Webmaster to decide where it is appropriate to make activation apparent to the user. For example, on a page with a text-heavy article next to a column of text advertisements you may want to encourage users to look up words within the article, but you may not want any distractions—like a custom cursor—when users are mousing over the advertisments. In this case you would put the WordClickTM <div> tags around the article content only.

    That's all there is to it. Upload your pages with these tags in place and your site is WordClickTM enabled.

More Information

You can add as many <div class="wordclick">…</div> tags as you like—i.e. you can mark multiple areas on the same page by adding sets of <div> tags around different blocks of content.

The <div> tags must include the 'class="wordclick"' attribute for the WordClickTM custom cursor to display. How the custom cursor appears to your users depends on the browser and operating system they are using. Users of Internet Explorer for Windows will see this custom cursor:

This custom cursor feature is optional and can be turned off by removing the <div class="wordclick">…</div> tags. Removing the <div> tags will not disable WordClick; it simply hides the WordClickTM custom cursor. To disable WordClickTM completely you must remove the script call in the <head> of the page and remove any <div class="wordclick">…</div> tags you have placed in the page.

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