Hypertext

Nelson (1965) claimed that "Systems of paper have grave limitations for either organising or presenting ideas. A book is never perfectly suited to the reader; one reader is bored, another confused by the same pages. No system of paper - book or programmed text - can adapt very far to the interests or needs of a particular reader or student."

In contrast to a paper representation, a hypertext representation provides a non-sequential, non-linear method of representing and accessing information. In a hypertext document information is stored as a network of nodes linked together by hotspots. The selection of one of these hotspots, or hotlinks, allows a jump to another page within a document or even to another document. A hypermedia system is an extension of this principle that integrates elements of multimedia, allowing selection of animation, video and sound from within the document.

With the advent of popular graphical user interfaces, interest in hypertext and hypermedia has exploded. As computers have now started to become commonplace the amount of information stored electronically has increased massively. The popularity of hypertext as a means of disseminating information stems from the fact that such systems are easy to use and allow rapid and unrestricted access to information. From the commercial point of view, compared to more traditional means of information dissemination, these systems are cheap to produce, distribute and update.

Although there are many advantages associated with a hypertext systems there are also a number of problems which are discussed in the following section.

Table of Contents

References

Authored by Serengul Smith

E-mail to: serengul1@mdx.ac.uk
School of Computing Science Middlesex University
Revised: September 1998