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.