Hypertext

Linking to External Blog Posts from Our Documentation

A technical writer’s blog on Wordpress Linking to external blog posts from our documentation with 3 comments At work, we’ve just started a new set of documentation pages called “Tips of the Trade“. The project is still in the early stages. I thought other tech writers might be interested, so I’m blogging about it now. There will be a page for each of the products we document. The pages contain a set of links to useful blog posts written by people out there on the www. It’s a way of giving our readers more information and a way of involving external bloggers, developers and authors in our documentation.

How Many Links Are Too Many Links?

To understand how much content effluvia we're subjected to, I wanted to see how many links are on the homepage of popular websites. For example, if I go to the homepage of the Huffington Post, I see 720 links, in one shot. Then click inside to a story and you've nearly doubled that number—it ads up pretty quickly. What about the tech blogs? BoingBoing Gadgets, 514. Gizmodo, 468. Engadget 432, all on one page. And on average, fewer than 1% of the links on news sites and blogs actually point to rich content, 99% are navigation and other article headlines. Aggregation site Techmeme has a whopping 1081 links.

BlockShopper v. Jones Day: The Right of Web Sites to Link

Cases that have addressed links and copyright dealt with the permissibility of "deep linking"—linking to a page other than the home page—which, of course, is indeed permitted. Ticketmaster famously lost a lawsuit against Tickets.com about just this. But that case was about copyright infringement; by making a trademark claim instead, Jones Day opened up another legal avenue.

Helpful Hyperlinks with JavaScript

There you are happily surfing a web site; you click a link and suddenly find yourself at another site being asked to download a file. What happened there? Annoying, isn’t it? There has to be a better way to indicate to your visitors where a link is going and to what type of file. So, to help solve this little annoyance, I’ve written a bit of JavaScript and CSS that adds pretty little icons after the links—depending on the file extension and location—to indicate to the user the type of document they’re about to load.

Lifestyles of the Link-Rich Home Pages

Contrast the Dove home page to the Dove site map. Using 5 times as many links, this page gives a real picture of the content of the site. Even with 148 links, it is well designed and organized nicely. It's easy for users to find what is available quickly.

Image Links vs. Text Links

Years back, we compared successful clickstreams (clickstreams that resulted in users accomplishing their goals, as observed in tons of usability tests) with unsuccessful clickstreams (clickstreams where users abandoned their goals before completing), looking for any clues that would help us predict behaviors in one that we didn’t see in the other. One factor we looked for was whether the clickstreams contained image links versus text links — does one type of link show up more often in successful clickstreams than the other. Our finding was when users clicked in image links they were just as likely to succeed or fail as when the clicked on text links. There was no statistically-meaningful difference.

Hypertext Links: Whither Thou Goest, and Why

The link is the basic element of hypertext, and researchers have long recognized that links provide semantic relationships for users. Yet little work has been done to understand the nature of these relationships, particularly in conjunction with the purposes of organizational/informational Web sites. This paper explores the semantic and rhetorical principles underlying link development and proposes a systematic, comprehensive classification of link types that would be of use to researchers and Web production teams.

Links and Hypertext: An Introduction to Links and Hypertext

Some types of links are more accessible than others, and some types of links are completely inaccessible to people with certain types of disabilities. Because links are so basic to the functionality of web content, inaccessible links are one of the most severe barriers to overall accessibility.

Common Ways Links Fail Users

I’ve thought of a few ways that links can fail users. By preventing these sorts of things (which admittedly, aren’t all that easy to prevent) we can design better links with the hopes of attaining that place where users never get lost.

Longitudinal Trends in Academic Web Links

Longitudinal studies of web change are needed to assess the stability of webometric statistics and this paper forms part of an on-going longitudinal study of three national academic web spaces. It examines the relationship between university inlinks and research productivity over time and identifies reasons for individual universities experiencing significant increases and decreases in inlinks over the last six years. The findings also indicate that between 66 and 70% of outlinks remain the same year on year for all three academic web spaces, although this stability conceals large individual differences. Moreover, there is evidence of a level of stability over time for university site inlinks when measured against research productivity. Surprisingly, however, inlink counts can vary significantly from year to year for individual universities, for reasons unrelated to research which undermines their use in webometrics studies.

Company Name First in Microcontent? Sometimes!

Typically, you should deemphasize your company's name in links, but a new guideline recommends frontloading the name for search engine links under certain conditions.

Practical Hypermedia: Using Hypertext and Multimedia in the Real World

Multimedia and hypertext are two of the hottest topics in technical communications today. Multimedia, in one form or another, has been around for decades—so has hypertext. Both have been of enormous interest to the technical communicator specifically, and the computer user in general. Lately, we have seen advancements in computer technology that can allow a computer user to produce presentations of considerable quality. Just as the advent of the Macintosh ushered in the era of desktop publishing, the rapidly falling prices of digital video cards and image editing software are about to pave the way for another revolution in desktop computing.

Hypertext as a Productivity Tool for Technical Writing

Hypertext is a novel approach to computer-based information management based on associative indexing. The concept in general and the characteristics of typical systems are briefly reviewed. Strategies for applying hypertext techniques to the process of writing a technical document are examined. The way in which hypertext documents are used is discussed, focusing on a commonly encountered problem -- user disorientation within the document. Hypertext-based technical documents are compared and contrasted against their paper-based antecedents.

Providing Context for Ambiguous Link Phrases

This article demonstrates a technique that allows ambiguous link phrases to be rendered visually in a page, whilst making sense to screen readers, and other non-graphical devices, that might render the links out of context.

Critical Elements in the Design of Help and Hypertext Systems

The demand for help and hypertext systems has created a problem for many documentation departments, particularly those in smaller companies and inexperienced in creating these forms of online documentation. The scarcity of existing literature compounds this problem. This document provides writers in small companies with limited resources some suggestions to facilitate hypertext project management, planning, design, editing, and usability testing. Also discussed is how to select a hypertext package.

Linking to Pages or Destinations Within PDFs

Information about how to link to pages or specific bookmarks within a PDF document.

The Effect of Informative, Intriguing, and Generic Hyperlink Wording on Web Browsing Behavior

This paper presents a study of the effect of informative, intriguing, and generic hyperlink wording on Web browsing behavior. The study was administered via the Web using a modified naturally occurring informational Web site. Link wording was varied in both the navigation menu and links embedded in the text. Data about participants' browsing behavior were logged with PHP scripts, and demographics, perceptions, and comprehension were measured through a post-browsing survey. Data from the study are being analyzed and will be presented at the conference.

The Information Revolution

Nobody is offering courses in how to prepare hypermedia, nor are there a large number of jobs available for hypermedia authors. As we begin to come up against the limits imposed by the volume of existing knowledge, we will eventually be forced to place more importance on managing our information explosion.

Dynamic Hypertext: Querying and Linking

There are many models of hypertext, distinguished by a number of factors such as the underlying semantic data model (link typing and node typing), the degree of dynamic linking in the hypertext, and how dynamism and other behaviours are implemented. This essay examines a particular approach to dynamism in hypertext, based on the degree of similarity between a text passage in a source node and the text of a target node. It reviews work carried out over the past decade in creating systems for markup-based querying and dynamic hypertext, with particular emphasis on a model of dynamic hypertext that computes hypertext links on the fly using queries.

Hypermedia Research Directions: An Infrastructure Perspective

This paper offers a perspective on the directions in which hypermedia infrastructure research will move in the next several years. The perspective is based on the authors' experiences and insights from a decade of active participation in this research area. After a review of hypermedia infrastructure research, the paper focuses on two particular threads of such research named 'multiple open services' and 'structural computing'. We believe that these threads show much promise for the future.

Teaching Hypertext Composition

Composing hypertext documents can be an enriching path into the world of technical communication. In learning to produce hypertext, students are introduced to an important form of written composition that encompasses not only text generation, but also visual communication and information architecture. In this article, I provide a rationale for teaching hypertext composition and then some specific curricular suggestions in two parts, one for teaching beginners, and one for teaching more advanced students.

Links

Linking means that users will select and click on a hypertext link on a starting page (usually the homepage), which then causes a new page to load. Users continue toward their goal by finding and clicking on subsequent links. To ensure that links are effectively used, designers should use meaningful link labels (making sure that link names are consistent with their targets), provide consistent clickability cues (avoiding misleading cues), and designate when links have been clicked. Whenever possible, designers should use text for links rather than graphics. Text links usually provide much better information about the target than do graphics.

Avoid Within-Page Links

On the Web, users have a clear mental model for a hypertext link: it should bring up a new page. Within-page links violate this model and thus cause confusion.

The Lack of Interactivity and Hypertextuality in Online Media

The main focus of this article is related to the forms of mediated content that are offered in online space. Two specific aspects of new cyber-textuality are discussed--the notion of hypertextuality and the potential of interactivity. Both characteristics are understood as new challenges that reflect specific communication potentials of the internet. In an empirical sense, the article tries to show the extent these significant forms of mediation are used in online media news. For this reason a comparison between media content in print and online media has been made. The findings reveal the lack of interactivity in practice and explore its diversity as a communication form between media producers and reader. Regarding the hypertextuality, the analysis shows the complexity of this concept, which in the realm of news media online is still maturing.

How to Get Links Without Asking

Sending out link requests is a time-consuming business. So wouldn't it be wonderful if other sites linked to you without being asked? Sound impossible? Well, it can be done and here are ten strategies to prove it. Why not start 2006 by making sure you use them?

Hipertexto y Edición en la "Cultura Digital"

Desarrolla conceptos básicos de Internet para dirimir nuevas posibilidades para la comunicación, la cultura y la investigación. Estudio realizado por Marta Graupera Sanz.

The Cultural Metamorphosis of the Internet. Hypertext and Publishing in the 'Digital Culture' (Notes Regarding Communicative Convergence)

Focuses on the cultural significance of hypertext and online publishing possibilities for culture, education, research and communication.

Creating User-Friendly Links

Google returns well over 15 million search results to the technical question of how to code hyperlinks in HTML. However, a question on how link texts should be formulated, so that the reader can understand them clearly, fetches only a handful of usable tips. Even most style guides and authoring guidelines are reticent on this topic. In this article you will find tips on this rarely dealt with, though important subject for Technical Communicators.

Information Layering: bedarfsspezifisch informieren

Wenn Sie diesen Absatz lesen, sind Sie bereits mittendrin: im "Information Layering". Ihr Informationsbedarf: herauszufinden, ob sich die Lektüre dieses Artikels lohnt. Dazu gibt der erste, layouttechnisch hervorgehobene Absatz einen kurzen Eindruck vom Inhalt. Das erspart es Ihnen den kompletten Artikel zu überfliegen. Die Information "um was geht es?" steht vom Rest losgelöst auf einer eigenen Ebene – englisch: "layer". Während dieses einfache Beispiel seit Jahrzehnten in jeder Zeitung funktioniert, bieten moderne Online-Medien noch viel mehr Möglichkeiten Relevantes von Irrelevantem zu trennen.

Links Anwenderfreundlich Formulieren

Auf die Frage, wie Hyperlinks technisch in HTML zu formulieren sind, listet Google weit über 15 Millionen Treffer. Auf die Frage hingegen, wie die Linktexte gestaltet sein sollen, damit sie der Leser gut versteht, lassen sich brauchbare Empfehlungen an einer Hand abzählen. Auch die meisten Styleguides und Redaktionsleitfäden halten sich bei dieser Frage bedeckt. Im folgenden Beitrag finden Sie Tipps zu diesem wenig behandelten, aus Sicht der Technischen Dokumentation aber wichtigen Thema.

What's Happening: Theory and Research

What will the 'document of the future' look like? What will be the new balance between text and other channels of communication?

Link Location That Works

Where to put links on a web page? That's a standard dilemma for content writers. Best to establish a policy and make sure all writers on your site follow it. That has an added advantage of standardising the 'look' of your pages.

Hypertext in the Computer-Facilitated Writing Class

The advent of new print-based communication technologies can facilitate the convergence of composition theory and praxis in the computer-assisted composition classroom.

Review of Writing at the Edge: Student Webs from Brown University

In Writing at the Edge, George Landow has provided a hypertext that is both in and about hypertext.

Hyperlinks, Frames and Intellectual Property

This paper is concerned with how the use of hyperlinks and frames to present material from another website may infringe the rights of the originating site.

Reviving Advanced Hypertext

To manage a huge, worldwide information space, users need proven features like fat links, typed links, integrated search and browsing, overview maps, big-screen designs, and physical hypertext.

Search Engine Hits on Popular Keywords

Find out how various popular keywords rank against their opposites (life vs. death, heaven vs. hell, Jesus vs. Beatles, everything vs. nothing, etc.) in this report on a unique One Hour Google Search Experiment. But what does it all mean? Draw your own conclusions. Fun and enlightening.

Cooperative Effort in Producing Paper and Hypertext Documentation

Using hypertext and paper creates a successful trip for the user of an interactive, mainframe software system. Building integrated, complementary documentation requires thoughtful planning, careful organization, and skillful implementation. The resulting product needs the cooperation of the entire team.

Evaluating Student-Created Hypertexts: A Map

In this paper I offer thumbnail sketches for four methods of assessing student work in computer-mediated composition courses.

Intent as a Factor in Designing the Hypermediated Narrative

The potential for combining images, graphics, video, and sound with traditional text in an interactive environment allowed narrative to move into new areas of expression.

Designing a Hypermedia Program: Early Planning Stages

The personal computer has had a significant impact on the delivery of educational material. Hypermedia systems give students the ability to explore concepts in innovative ways. Unfortunately, it appears that many hypermedia designers have ignored the critical early planning stages. This paper provides an overview of three of those planning stages: audience analysis, system goals analysis, and control analysis.

Studies in Hypertext: the Conversion of Traditional Texts into Web Sites

The production of a web page has become a common assignment in a number of university classrooms, but there has yet to be established a pedagogy for the generation of large group-generated web sites that replicate the methods found in industry. In Studies in Hypertext, a course offered to technical communication students at the University of Central Florida, such a pedagogy is being shaped. In this course, students with little or no experience in web site generation work their way through a series of written and small web site construction tasks to eventually produce one complex and competently-integrated web site.

Links: What's Kosher?

If your organization has a Web site, it can be useful to see who else has made links to your site. By tracking down those links, you can find out what people are saying about your site, what pages are particularly useful, and how people are finding your site.

L'Utilisation de l'Hypertexte

L'ennemi de l'hypertexte, c'est l'hypertexte lui-même... Abusez de l'hypertexte et vous ne tarderez pas à dérouter votre visiteur. Evitez donc l'effet 'labyrinthe' dans la mesure du possible ! Un utilisateur ne devrait jamais avoir à explorer des forêts de boutons pour obtenir de simples informations.

Applying Hypertext and Hypermedia to Scholarly Journals Enables Both Product and Process Innovation

Early uses of hypertext technologies were associated with scholarly communication. New electronic-only journals have been quick to adopt hypertext/hypermedia technologies. Existing print journals have also started to adopt such technologies as they make the transition to parallel delivery. The widespread uptake of the World Wide Web has enabled journals to improve, enhance and transform what they do. This paper surveys these developments and places them in context.

Hypermedia: A Design Philosophy

Few designers explicitly think about their applications' interrelationships. Designers appear not have a deep enough conceptualization of their domains to identify intuitive relationships and realize the full scope and interconnections within domains. RNA (Relationship-Navigation Analysis) gives designers and developers an analysis tool to think about an information domain in terms of its interrelationships. RNA incorporates a complete taxonomy of generic relationship types that would apply to any application domain.

Hypertext Functionality

The Hypertext Functionality field studies techniques for and the impact of supplementing everyday computer applications with hypertext (or hypermedia) functionality (HTF). The HTF approach encourages system developers to think actively about an application's interrelationships, and whether users should access and navigate along these relationships directly. It views hypertext as value-added support functionality. The HTF approach fosters three major areas of research: using HTF to improve personal and organizational effectiveness, HTF and application design,and integrating HTF into applications.

Clarifying the Real Goals of Hypertext

Hypertext should be seen as augmenting the existing techniques of structure and navigation, not as superceding and replacing them.

Design for Rapid Navigation and Easy Visual Scanning

The philosophy of designing for usability.

Linear, Moderate Hypertext: The Scrolling Page With Hyperlinked Subheadings Conveys Large-Scale Infomation Structure Better Than Isolated Cards

The 'article' approach is better than the 'card' (or 'topic') approach. Concatenate your hypertext nodes and format the headings relatively, for increased comprehensibility of large amounts of conceptual material. Placing node bodies contiguously enhances visibility of information structure.

Long Pages and Gentler Separation of Adjacent Nodes

Hypertext theory chronically assumes the strongly fragmented card model rather than the article model of presentation.

Rapid Navigation in Online Documents

A site dedicated to the design of documents and viewers to support structured hypertext and easy skimming. The site covers information structuring, rapid navigation, and designing Help, Web pages, and documents. The intended audience for this site includes UI designers, technical writers, Web developers, Help authors, usability testers, and hypertext theorists.

Research About Hypertext Navigation and Web Structure-Handling Capabilities

The Web did what no other hypertext system did (with the possible notable exception of HyperCard): it brought hypertext to the large public.

Hypertext Maps

Hypertext mapping has long challenged writers, and perplexed hypertext system designers. Clear, attractive, and informative maps help readers and writers understand the structure of complex hypertexts. Conversely, in the absence of adequate mapping tools, many writers fall back on simplistic link models like sequential lists and outlines.

Building Hypermedia Information Systems That Work

The trend to online delivery of information means new challenges for developers. New skills must be learned. Developing a hypermedia information delivery system. Five steps are critical to the conversion process: (I) Determine spectjic system requirements. (2) Create a pzoject team with clearly assigned roles. (3) Develop an implementation plan. (4) Implement the Plan. (5) Update and maintain the system.

What is Good Hypertext Writing?

There is more to writing than putting words next to each other, and there is more to writing hypertext than throwing together a bunch of links. When writing text, I have certain goals; when I come across text I dislike, there are certain reasons why I do not like it. You're about to read an attempt to describe these reasons and goals; it is incomplete, subjective, and honest.

Writing Hypertext Copy

The two pitfalls of writing hypertext copy are links and emotions. Links are a new stylistic element that writers must learn to handle. The emotional problem is harder: we must snap out of the 'host' or 'provider' role, must get away from the excitement of guiding another person through the text, and get back to - just writing.

Linking 101

Linking is surely one of the least understood functions of many applications. But if anyone can explain how it works in PageMaker, Illustrator, and FrameMaker, Professor Kvern can.

Thinking Twice About Lanham

Describes a method for continually moving back and forth between seeing things objectively and seeing the temporality of all we do and decide.

Fourth-Generation Hypermedia: Some Missing Links for the World-Wide Web

World Wide Web authors must cope in a hypermedia environment analogous to second-generation computing languages, building and managing most hypermedia links using simple anchors and single-step navigation. Following this analogy, sophisticated application environments on the World Wide Web will require third- and fourth-generation hypermedia features. Implementing third- and fourth-generation hypermedia involves designing both high- level hypermedia features and the high-level authoring environments system developers build for authors to specify them. We present a set of high-level hypermedia features including typed nodes and links, link attributes, structure-based query, transclusions, warm and hot links, private and public links, hypermedia access permissions, computed personalized links, external link databases, link update mechanisms, overviews, trails, guided tours, backtracking, and history-based navigation. We ground our discussion in the hypermedia research literature, and illustrate each feature both from existing implementations and a running scenario. We also give some direction for implementing these on the World Wide Web and in other information systems.

Foreseeing the Future: The Legacy of Vannevar Bush

Fifty years before web, 30 years before the personal computer, Vannevar Bush envisioned a new machine to make sense of the growing mountains of information, creating the notions of 'hypertext' and the modern link.

Strategic Linking Techniques

Utilize hypertext to maximize the interactive experience of your site. Above all else, hypertext should be used to help your users find what they want, when they want it. You want your users to be able to get more information at just the right time and place in your pages. This isn't easy. Poor linking is a major problem on almost all Web sites.

When to Link Out of Your Site

You should only link out of your own site as a last resort. In general you want to keep your visitors at your site. Heck, isn't that why you built it? But there are times when it makes sense to stop the insanity and add that link. You must send visitors away sometimes.

Traffic from Referring Sites

The amount of traffic referred to a site from other sites seems to follow a Zipf distribution quite closely. The figure shows the distribution of traffic referred to useit.com from other websites during the first three months of 1997. Each dot on the figure represents a URL from which one or more users followed a link to useit.com. Even though the data is not a perfect match with the Zipf curve, it does seem to be the case that the referrals are reasonably close to the Zipf curve. In other words, there are a few other sites that direct a lot of traffic to useit (either because these sites have very high traffic themselves or because they have prominent links to useit). Note that search engines (the blue dots) are strongly represented among these often-referring sites.

Features for the Next Generation of Web Browsers

The future is not what it used to be, especially regarding WWW browsers. They used to come in two flavors: text and Mosaic, but now there is a profusion of choices. Netscape has shown that it is possible to dominate the Internet almost overnight, going from less than one percent to about 70% market share during the last two months of 1994. Such rapid changes may be a unique characteristic of the Internet since most other markets award more permanence and slower erosion of market share to their leaders. On the Internet, news and customer testimonials spread immediately world-wide and 'shelf space' is limited only by the vendor's server capacity and connection bandwidth (indeed, Netscape would probably have spread faster if only people could get through to their FTP site!).

The Future of Hypertext

In the short term of three to five years, I don't really expect significant changes in the way hypertext is done compared to the currently known systems. Of course new stuff will be invented all the time, but just getting the things we already have in the laboratory out into the world will be more than enough. I expect to see three major changes: the consolidation of the mass market for hypertext; commercial information services on the Internet; the integration of hypertext and other computer facilities.

Three HyperCard Stacks on CD-ROM: A Review

A review of the Macintosh CD-ROM versions of The Manhole, the Time Table of History, and the Electronic Whole Earth Catalog with emphasis on their usability and their support of hypertext navigation. Based on the discussion of these hypertexts the following general principles are found to be useful for analyzing hypertext user interfaces: Navigational dimensions and their explicitness, directionality and literalness, landmarks, locational orientation, history lists, and backtrack mechanisms.

Two Basic Hypertext Presentation Models

The hypertext world has classically distinguished between two fundamentally different ways of presenting hypertext nodes on the screen: scrolling and cards. Throughout the history of hypertext, designers of hypertext systems have argued about the relative merits of these two contrasting approaches. The proponents of the scrolling model are sometimes called the holy scrollers and the proponents of the card model are called the card sharks. Here are examples of documents I have authored myself in these two models, using pre-WWW hypertext systems.

Providing Sequencing Cues for Non-Linear Text

Much of the information writers provide for users is hypertext. Providing information in an online format can create an extra burden for the users—that of sequencing the information. Authors of hypertext can help users navigate online information by adding sequencing cues in the text (in addition to conventional navigation aids such as indexes and hyperlinks). The sequencing cues direct the reader to related topics using a path designed by the author. In this study, sequencing cues were found to be a viable option for users reading a particular online document for the first time.

Use Links Efficiently

When you place content, Adobe® InDesign® 2.0 doesn't just add the graphics and text to your document—it keeps track of the original files as well. You can use the links to update the data if the original file changes, to track down missing graphic information, or to replace a graphic with another, without losing the transformations you've applied. And when you work with text files, it's usually best to remove the link altogether.

Studies in Hypertext

This Web site is a collaborative effort by students in Studies In Hypertext — a Technical Writing class offered by the Department of English at the University of Central Florida. The following pages discuss the political, theoretical, and technical issues of the World Wide Web and how these issues relate to the practices of communication, learning, and information retrieval in our culture.

The Ergonomics of Hypertext Narative: Usability Testing as a Tool for Evaluation and Redesign

While usability research concentrates on evaluating informational documents and Web sites, significant insights can be gained from performing usability testing on texts designed for pleasure reading, such as hypertext narratives. This article describes the results of such a test. The results demonstrate that the navigation systems required for such texts can significantly interfere with readers ability to derive value or pleasure from the fiction. The results emphasize the importance of hypertext authors providing more linear paths through texts and of simplifying the navigational apparatus required to read them.

Hypertext Technology as a Tool for Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW)

Because of the nature and complexity of collaborative work, there is currently much interest in examining computer support for team endeavors. Hypertext technology is particularly suited to providing such support. Many current hypertext applications support collaborative endeavors in diverse fields. Rensselaer’s Design Conference Room (DCR) is an Electronic Meeting System facility intended to support mechanical and software engineering design teams. Teams meeting or working in the DCR have access to sophisticated networking and hypertext technologies. Careful study of the processes and products of DCR team will contribute to an understanding of how hypertext (and other computer technologies) can best support team endeavors.

Hypermedia as Integration: Recollections, Reflections and Exhortations

Hypermedia and its earlier form, hypertext, refer to the notion of information structured as linked networks, as well as to the building, storing, navigating, and searching of such structures. The talk starts with the observation that integration has always been a goal of hypermedia developers. At first, this took the form of large monolithic link-enhanced environments that included support for text editing, electronic mail, CSCW, software engineering, and project management among other applications. Later, the 'open systems' movement arrived and the meaning of hypermedia integration shifted to connecting existing applications. With the emergence of the World-Wide Web, the world's first broad-based hypermedia system, the dream of integration now extends across sites, networks, media formats, and hardware platforms. Using a current example (extending the Netscape browser to support email management), I argue that this history is not as linear as it seems, in fact the old monolithic agendas seem still to be with us.

Електронната vs. Книга-Печат и Хипертекст

Първата вълна на масирани ХТ изследвания се появи през 1992. Джордж Ландоу написа Конвергенцията на технологията и съвременната критическа теория; Дейвид Болтър - Писменото пространство; Майрън Тъман - Оnline грамотността. Опиращи се на различни предходни теоретични източници в спектъра от Дерида до инженери като Теодор Нелсън, и тримата поддържат гледището, че ХТ се заражда като идея в ранни литературнотеоретични работи.

Препратки по хипертекста

Кратка история на хипертекста, дискусия за хипертекст (теория и практика), и структура на хипертекста.

A Body of Criticism

The nature of hypertext challenges many underlying assumptions for traditional literary critics. Literary critics frequently like to think that they have objectively looked at the lexias of the work, thoughtfully considered them, and constructed a solid interpretation or analysis of the work based on those lexia. Hypertext, however, presents the possibility that two critics who are reading the same work may have differing sets of lexia from which to work. Thus, even if critics objectively consider the lexia before them, they cannot free themselves from the subjectivity of the reading performance that made those lexia (and not others) appear. This raises the concern that, if hypertext critics can only present subjective views of the text, there may be little or no benefit to reading or writing those critiques.

Inappropriate Format][ing][: Craft-Orientation vs. Networked Content[s]

From the point-of-view of this net.art practitioner-plus-reviewer, it seems evident that various web/net/code artists are more likely to be accepted into an academic reification circuit/traditional art market if they produce works that reflect a traditional craft-worker positioning. This 'craft' orientation [producing skilled/practically inclined output, rather than placing adequate emphasis on the conceptual or ephemeral aspects of a networked, or code/software-based, medium] is embraced and replicated by artists who create finished, marketable, tangible objects; read: work that slots nicely into a capitalistic framework where products/objects are commodified and hence equated with substantiated worth.

Publish and Sell Your Book in Hypertext

Anyone who would like to publish a book should consider using Windows™ hypertext Help. Publishing in hypertext can help authors fulfill their creative urge. Conventional publishing methods can obstruct good writers from contributing to their respective field of interest. It is hard to get a book proposal accepted today. Competition is fierce, and writers must follow accepted protocols to have ideas considered. There is potential for writers who develop and produce Windows online Help systems. They are already 'experts' in a newly emerging technology. Using the Windows hypertext medium, writers can publish and sell their ideas without the hassles of the publishing industry.

Diseño Hipermedia Centrado en el Usuario

La hipermedia surge como resultado de la fusión de dos tecnologías, el hipertexto y la multimedia. El hipertexto es la organización de una determinada información en diferentes nodos, conectados entre sí a través de enlaces. Los nodos pueden contener sub-elementos con entidad propia. Un hiperdocumento estaría formado por un conjunto de nodos conectados y relacionados temática y estructuralmente. La tecnología multimedia es la que permite integrar diferentes medios (sonido, imágenes, secuencias...) en una misma presentación.

Escritura Hipertextual

La escritura hipertextual, que tiene como unidad básica el enlace y como soporte lógico el electrónico, se debe realizar de forma diferente a la escritura convencional. A los usuarios no les gusta leer en pantalla, por lo que agradecerán cuanto más les facilitemos dicha tarea. En este artículo se tratará la correcta presentación de contenidos y elementos de interacción (enlaces) en los documentos hipertextuales.

State of the Art Review on Hypermedia Issues And Applications

Hypertext systems are emerging as a new class of complex information management systems. These systems allow people to create, annotate, link together, and share information from a variety of media such as text, graphics, audio, video, animation, and programs. Hypertext systems provide a non-sequential and entirely new method of accessing information unlike traditional information systems which are primarily sequential in nature. They provide flexible access to information by incorporating the notions of navigation, annotation, and tailored presentation [Bieber, 1993]. There are a number of research issues related to the design, development, and application of hypertext systems. This paper is a review of literature related to all these issues. This chapter is an introduction to hypertext, some existing systems, and some pioneers who have contributed to the definition and understanding of many aspects related to hypertext. Chapter 2 discusses issues related to hypertext implementation. Chapter 3 is on database requirements for hypertext systems. Chapter 4 discusses user interface issues and evaluation of hypertext. Chapter 5 is on information retrieval in hypertext systems. Chapter 6 discusses research efforts in the area of integrating hypertext with the work environment. Chapter 7 discusses some of the applications for which the hypertext paradigm is most suitable. Chapter 8 discusses a systematic approach to user interface design for a hyprtext system. It is an attempt to apply some of the ideas discussed in earlier chapters. Chapter 9 is a summary of all research issues and sets some directions for further work.

SIGWEB Newsletter

SIGWEB supports the multi-disciplinary field of hypertext and hypermedia, facilitating its application both on the World-Wide-Web and also in independent, distributed and stand-alone environments. It provides a forum for the promotion, dissemination, and exchange of ideas concerning research and application among scientists, systems designers and endusers. Particular emphasis is placed on the development of technology methodologies and standards, encouragement of greater public acceptance of hypertext technology and the promotion of consensus within the field.

Contextual Navigation Aids for Two World Wide Web Systems

In spite of the radical enhancement of Web technologies, many users still continue to experience severe difficulties in navigating Web systems. One way to reduce the navigation difficulties is to provide context information that explains the current situation of Web users. In this study, we empirically examined the effects of 2 types of context information, structural and temporal context. In the experiment, we evaluated the effectiveness of the contextual navigation aids in 2 different types of Web systems, an electronic commerce system that has a well-defined structure and a content dissemination system that has an ill-defined structure. In our experiment, participants answered a set of postquestionnaires after performing several searching and browsing tasks. The results of the experiment reveal that the 2 types of contextual navigation aids significantly improved the performance of the given tasks regardless of different Web systems and different task types. Moreover, context information changed the users’ navigation patterns and increased their subjective convenience of navigation. This study concludes with implications for understanding the users’ searching and browsing patterns and for developing effective navigation systems.

Hypertext Gardens: Delightful Vistas

The attention of the audience is a writer's most precious possession, and the value of audience attention is seldom more clear than in writing for the Web. The time, care, and expense devoted to creating and promoting a hypertext are lost if readers arrive, glance around, and click elsewhere.

Defining The Control Level When Designing Hypermedia Training

Before coding any part of a hypermedia computer-based training (CBT) system, designers need to decide how much control their users should have over their individual paths through the system. Designers can choose from three different levels of control within a hypermedia CBT system: complete computer control, complete user control, and adaptive computer control. Each level of control is suited to different types of audiences and system goals. Current research provides some guidelines for designers—showing which types of audiences and system goals are suited to which methods of control.

HyperTexas

HyperTexas ('hypertext', get it?) is a watering hole for Technical Writers, MS HTML Help, WebHelp, WinHelp Authors and Web Developers looking for late-breaking news on tools and techniques of our craft.

Hypermedia Systems in the New Millennium

This article revisits three past articles about the implications of hypermedia in the 21st century. Each August, the ACM Journal of Computer Documentation reprints a classic article, book chapter, or report along with several analytical commen- taries and a response by the author of the classic document. In this context, a 'classic' document means one that was published at least five years ago but is no longer in print. It also means one that raises issues of lasting importance to the profession.

Reflections on NoteCards: Seven Issues for the Next Generation of Hypermedia Systems

NoteCards, developed by a team at Xerox PARC, was designed to support the task of transforming a chaotic collection of unrelated thoughts into an integrated, orderly interpretation of ideas and their interconnections. This article presents NoteCards as a foil against which to explore some of the major limitations of the current generation of hypermedia systems, and characterizes the issues that must be addressed in designing the next generation systems.

Deep Linking: An Ethical and Legal Analysis

Deep linking, the practice of linking to a subsidiary page rather than the home page of another organization’s website, is the subject of considerable controversy. In several recent lawsuits, plaintiffs have alleged violations of copyright, trademark, and commercial laws. In this article, I review the legal and ethical issues regarding deep linking and comment on how the ethical conflict between rights and utility motivates the controversy. I conclude that protecting site owners’ rights to control deep linking to their sites is a stronger value than enhancing the utility of the Web for users by allowing completely unrestricted deep linking. Finally, I recommend a collection of resources for Web developers interested in staying current with the evolving controversy.

Constructing the Flattened Self: After Postmodernism in Computer Interfaces

Since this is going to be a wild ride across a some disciplines that don’t normally talk to each other, let me start with a short, structural overview to get everyone situated. I’m going to begin by defining some terms. They’re all relatively simple, common terms, but I’m going to attempt to bring them together in a particular configuration; in order for that configuration to make sense, I need to settle on some loose definitions and, at the same time, make the terms relevant to our discussion. Next--and this is probably the bulk of the talk--I’ll be outlining a geneaology of work, particularly as it relates to interface design. In this history, I’m interested in understanding, from a critical perspective, what happens to work as it increasingly takes place within the computer interface. I’ll say here that the end of this history is where the terms “postmodernism,” “work,” and “interface” come together. Finally, I’ll offer some suggestions—and examples—of ways that we -- as teachers, researchers, designers, communicators -- can begin to deal productively with some of the problems I see with how interfaces are currently being designed and used.

After Hypertext

The final decade of the last century witnessed the dramatic rise of hypertext as a literary, technical, social, and intellectual phenomenon. Today, despite the fact that hypertext provides the conceptual underpinnings for the World Wide Web (among other things), 'hypertext' remains a relatively peripheral term. In this talk, I'll track some of the ways that 'hypertext' has been articulated during the last five decades, describing how the social construction of hypertext inscribed the technology(ies) in limiting and ultimately self-defeating ways. I'll then attempt to track (and construct) some possible futures for a dramatically redefined hypertext, one constructed as an 'ethic of reference' within and among social communities rather than a technical practice.

Datacloud: Expanding the Roles and Locations of Information

This presentation traces the locations and roles of computer documentation over the latter half of the 20th century in order to construct a model of information/knowledge space as it relates to different forms of work. The paper then provides suggestions about future forms of documentation and interface based on ethnographic research of workers in recently emerging forms of work, including nonlinear audio/video production and videogame playing. The final section of the paper provides concrete suggestions about forms of documentation and interface that will be required to support these new forms of work.

Little Machines: Rearticulating Hypertext Users

In recognizing ourselves as computer users, we are also articulated (at least partially) as the used, the variable piece of the machine that closes the circuit, like a key in the ignition of a car. We are happiest when our technologies when they work automatically, when the machine appears to anticipate our every desire. The machine is never completely absent from our attention, but it is becoming increasingly difficult--pointless, it seems--to think critically about the operations of the machine and our position within it. We don't think often about the ways in which the technology (and the larger, social technical system) construct users in ways that presuppose a simple, mechanistic model of efficiency and value. If the programmers have done their work well, we reason, then we shouldn't have to think. Functional hypertexts (online documention, references, tutorials) are defined, socially and politically, in this politics of amnesia.

Hypertext Reflections

A discussion of some of the most compelling elements of current hypertext theory. By practicing the theory it preaches, it hopes to explicitly model the theoretical interrogations of the issue.

SIGWEB

SIGWEB supports the multi-disciplinary field of hypertext and hypermedia, facilitating its application both on the World-Wide Web and also in independent, distributed and stand-alone environments. It provides a forum for the promotion, dissemination, and exchange of ideas concerning research and applications among scientists, systems designers and end-users.

Politexts, Hypertexts, and Other Cultural Formations in the Late Age of Print

I have twisted the language to contrive the title of this essay because I want to interrogate the future of literacy, both its electronic formations (if indeed these differ from its pre-electronic ones) and its social origins and effects. Hence: I am using the unpronounceable locution e-literacies in two different ways: first, to mean those reading and writing processes specific to electronic texts (by texts, I mean a whole range of digitally encoded materials -- words, sounds, pictures, video clips, simulations, etc.); second, to signify elite-racies as in those socio-economic elites whose interests might be served by electronic literacies of one sort or another, or who might come to be elites by virtue of their ability to shape electronic literacies.

Guidelines for Designing Web Navigation

As Web sites grow larger and more complex, the challenge of designing effective user navigation increases. We offer designers (as well as those evaluating existing Web sites) a set of 12 guidelines encompassing that attempt to cover the most important and broadly relevant navigation issues. These guidelines are grouped under four topics: (1) Designing an effective link, (2) Managing large numbers of links, (3) Providing orientation information, and (4) Augmenting link-to-link navigation. With each guideline there is an example and a synthesis of the most relevant and compelling research, theory, and expert opinion. These guidelines apply to what can be broadly termed informational Web sites rather than sites for game-players, art sites, and sites intended for whimsy and fun.

Visual-Spatial Thinking in Hypertexts

This article explores what it means to think visually and spatially in hypertexts. As visual-spatial texts, hypertexts urge users to think differently than they do with paper-based (verbal-linear) texts, perceiving the hypertext in three-dimensions and imagining the possible 'future paths' that might be followed in the text. Drawing from research on visual-spatial thinking from cognitive science, we explore how users react and maneuver in real and virtual three-dimensional spaces. Then we offer four principles of visual thinking that can be applied to the development of hypertexts. Illustrative uses of these principles are provided.

The Contribution of Hypermedia Link Authoring

Linking, when properly executed, enhances the value of content by providing a consistent perspective and organizational scheme that enriches the user's experience. Link authoring, like content authoring, is a creative process of making connections between disparate yet related information. Effective link authoring requires intellect, creativity, and domain knowledge to define the relationships among concepts that can support a particular pedagogical objective. The contribution of hypermedia link authoring is often poorly understood and unrecognized by traditional academic and publishing communities. Publishers of commercial and academic hypermedia typically neither formally recognize link authoring as something that should be protected by copyright, nor do they extend to those involved in link authoring the same degree of credit or remuneration given conventional content authors or illustrators.

Converting Legacy Documents to Hypertext

When I first came to Boeing, my workgroup delivered documents (stored either in Microsoft Word or XyWrite) in hardcopy format. As more modern document delivery options were made available to us, I convinced the customers, development staff and the management to adopt these new technologies to make documentation maintenance and delivery easier. I also converted over 1000 pages of documentation (such as language reference manuals, quick reference guides, installation guides and user guides) from strict text formatting to hypertext. This chapter will share what I learned with you. Here are some guidelines I recommend you follow when you begin to convert your paper-based documents to hypertext. Each guideline will be expounded later in this chapter.

Problems and Solutions Converting Linear Documents to a Non-Linear Web Environment

The World-Wide Web empowers writers, educators, and businesses with a new medium to display content, communicate to their audiences, advertise, or simply organize information for a new type of presentation. Because the last ten years mark the growth and emergence of web technology and proliferation, web design standards are slowly emerging, and have not yet solidified. The medium is immature, can be misused, and frequently communicates ineffectively. Many writers and designers of web pages are faced with the challenge of converting information traditionally printed linearly to a non-linear presentation on the Web. This changes information organization, encourages the hypertext theory, engages readers, and takes advantage of the dynamic flexibility of the Web.

Human Information Processing Correlates of Reading Hypertext

There are a number of systematic relationships between basic measures of cognitive processing and measures of reading performance. The correlational study reported here demonstrates that these same relationships can be observed in the reading of hypertext. In addition, correlations among spatial processing abilities and performance with hypertext support the idea that spatial and relational processing play important roles in reading and using hypertext.

Hypertext

Linked presentation as we know it today -- a navigation menu, a table of contents, a list of frequently asked questions (FAQ) -- suits informational material such as technical manuals, government documents, and most scientific research papers. These presentation formats do little to enhance narrative forms, however. Most discussion of online narrative -- and most experimentation -- has centered on fiction (Coover, 1993, 2000; Minganti, 1996) and literary studies (Landow, 1992; Lavagnino, 1997). Journalism narratives, especially long-form journalism, are overdue for attention.