Hypertext

Writing better link texts

Nano copy design improves holistic UX.

"Linking from your content is important - it builds credibility and improves usability, which combined equals more satisfied readers and hopefully return visits. Finding the right material to link to takes time and effort; effort that is wasted if no one bothers to 'Click here'."

(Mich Walkden ~ Mich-communication)

Posted on March 06, 2012 | Permalink

The art of linking

Hyperlinking used to be called hypertext, hypermedia or hyperspace.

"Linking is the essence of the Web. Web professionals must focus primarily on links, rather than the content or technology."

(Gerry McGovern)

Posted on January 16, 2012 | Permalink

Why Hypercard Had to Die

Should be part of "The Web That Wasn't".

"I was a Hypercard child - though our friendship was brief."

(Loper OS)
courtey of markbernstein

Posted on December 05, 2011 | Permalink

Flocks, Herds, and Stories: Temporal Coherence and The Long Tail

"The Web is large and new, it flourishes, It seems to go from strength to strength, and yet we do not know how strong it really is. We must remember that we still could wreck the web."

(Mark Bernstein a.k.a. @eastgate)

Posted on June 20, 2011 | Permalink

Possiplex: Ted Nelson '59 and the Literary Machine

"Nelson's ideas, once dismissed as utopian, have become central facts of modern life. But none of this is enough for him. The computing world we know is but a dim shadow of what might have been." (Mark Bernstein)

Posted on May 11, 2011 | Permalink

How web killed the hypertext star and other stories

"Over a period 30 years hypertext developed and started to mature … until in the early 1990s came the web and so much of hypertext died with its birth … I guess a bit like the way Java all but stiltified programming languages." (Alan Dix) ~ courtesy of markbernstein

Posted on November 08, 2010 | Permalink

ACM Hypertext 2010: As we may have thought, and may (still) think

"(...) I gave a keynote address at the Hypertext 2010 conference in Toronto where I found a community somewhat under threat by other web research conferences but nevertheless alive and kicking. The organizers had asked me to consider where the field might have gone wrong and where it might go in the future." (Andrew Dillon ~ ACM Hypertext Conference 2010)

Posted on September 02, 2010 | Permalink

Proceedings First International Congress on Web Studies

"The 1st international congress on Web Studies aims at providing a venue for researchers and professionals from different backgrounds for discussion, study, practical demonstrations, sharing, and exchange on new developments and theories regarding the World Wide Web. The congress therefore invites contributions from a heterogeneous set of fields and domains such as: Web systems, computational intelligence, human-computer interaction, digital theory, Web sociology, and well as interactive and digital arts. We also encourage contributions from businesses and organizations." (1st Int'l Congress on Web Studies) - courtesy of markbernstein

Posted on March 08, 2010 | Permalink

How Xanadu Works: Technical Overview

"Pause for a moment and think about the history here. 1993 is 16 years ago as I write this, about the same span of time between Vannevar Bush's groundbreaking 1945 article 'As We May Think' and Nelson's initial work in 1960 on what would become the Xanadu project. As far as software projects go, this one has some serious history." (Micah Dubinko - Micahpedia) - courtesy of markbernstein

Posted on November 26, 2009 | Permalink

Introduction to Special Issue on Spatial Hypertext

"The field of spatial hypertext emerged from early efforts to visualize node-and-link hypertexts in the late 1980s. There were a few different systems by the end of the 1990s and an annual Workshop on Spatial Hypertext began in 2001." (Journal of Digital Information 10.3) - courtesy of mbernstein

Posted on August 11, 2009 | Permalink

Flames

"XHTML2, a standard-building project planning a successor to XHTML, has been cancelled." (Mark Bernstein)

Posted on July 10, 2009 | Permalink

A formal description of ZigZag-structures

"The focus of this paper is on particular and innovative structures for storing, linking and manipulating information: the ZigZag-structures. In the last years, we worked at the formalization of these structures, retaining that the description of the formal aspects can provide a better understanding of them, and can also stimulate new ideas, projects and research. This work presents our contribution for a deeper discussion on ZigZag-structures." (XanaWorkshop 2009)

Posted on July 08, 2009 | Permalink

Remembering the Day the World Wide Web Was Born

"What drove Tim Berners-Lee to imagine this game-changing model for information sharing, and will its openness be its undoing?" - (Scientific American In-Depth Report)

Posted on March 13, 2009 | Permalink

The Hyperlink as Organizing Principle

"What does a hyperlink mean? The question itself is problematical. We might be satisfied with the simpler and related question of what a hyperlink is and what a hyperlink does. But in trying to understand what the larger social effects of hyperlink networks are, it is not enough to be able to define a hyperlink, we need to understand its nature, its use, and its social effects." (Alexander Halavais - in Turow T. and Lokman Tsui (eds.) 2008, The Hyperlinked Society)- courtesy of davidweinberger

Posted on July 29, 2008 | Permalink

Ted Nelson 70th Birthday Lecture

High definition video registration - Ted Nelson (the guy who coined the term 'hypertext') gave a 90 mins. speech on the occasion of his 70th birthday. Not on current computing, but based upon his million notes on meaningful connections, such as education, the brothers Grimm, Indo-European languages, the island of Crete, the Greek Gods, Wikipedia as a casino, AIDS, paper imitation 'under glass' and the limitations of the PARC User Interface. (Zepler TV)

Posted on January 07, 2008 | Permalink

Don't Click Here: The Art of Hyperlinking

"I suspect Wikipedia may be closer to Ted's vision of Xanadu: a self-contained constellation of highly interlinked information, with provisions for identity, versioning, and rights management. But enough about the history of the hyperlink. How can we use them effectively in the here and now? I thoroughly enjoyed Philipp Lenssen's recent link usability tips. I liked it so much, in fact, that I'm using it as a template for a visual compendium of link usability tips-- the art of hyperlinking." (Jeff Atwood - Coding Horror) - courtesy of lodewijkschutte

Posted on November 07, 2007 | Permalink

Understanding hypertext cognition: Developing mental models to aid users' comprehension

"This paper uses literature on hypertext theory to evaluate our reading strategies in an online environment. Assessing the impact of digital technology on our educational environment and culture, the paper recommends a new form of pedagogy for hypertexts based on Walter Ong's concept of 'secondary orality'." (Andy White - First Monday 12.1)

Posted on January 04, 2007 | Permalink

HyperScope

"HyperScope is a high-performance thought processor that enables you to navigate, view, and link to documents in sophisticated ways. It's the brainchild of Doug Engelbart, the inventor of hypertext and the mouse, and is the first step towards his larger vision for an Open Hyperdocument System." (Douglas Engelbart et al.) - courtesy of readwriteweb

Posted on September 05, 2006 | Permalink

Keynote at Hypertext conference

"Wikis were created in 1994 by Ward Cunningham, so he is considered the pioneer of wikis, and is the author of design patterns. Here are the notes from his talk." (Notes by Alvin Chin - GadgetMan's Blog)

Posted on August 26, 2006 | Permalink

Scan This Book!

"What will happen to books? Reader, take heart! Publisher, be very, very afraid. Internet search engines will set them free. A manifesto." (Kevin Kelly)

Posted on August 25, 2006 | Permalink

Ambient Findability Bibliography

"Livia Labate has created a de.licio.us ambient findability bibliography which guides readers to all sorts of sources of inspiration." (Peter Morville - findability.org)

Posted on November 21, 2005 | Permalink

Mark Bernstein Lecture Notes

"This page collects visuals from some of the larger talks and lectures I've given over the years. Many of these talks get complex; often, I try to put one set of ideas in the visuals and another in the lecture itself. These notes generally include only the visual argument." (Mark Bernstein)

Posted on July 10, 2005 | Permalink

Liquid Information

"(...) a research project at UCLiC in London in cooperation with Doug Engelbart in California. We are aiming to make text more interactive - turning words into hyperwords. Why? Most electronic communication has focused on the production of information, not the digestion of information. In order to make informed decisions in our work, it's not enough to rely on automated systems - we need to get the right information into our heads." (About Liquid Information) - courtesy of nooface

Posted on April 19, 2005 | Permalink

WWW@10 Videos: The Dream and the Reality

"Keynote speeches from the 10th Anniversary of the World Wide Web. September 30 through October 2, 2004 - Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology - Terre Haute, Indiana, USA" (WWW@10 Conference)

Posted on March 12, 2005 | Permalink

HypertextNow

Remarks on the state of hypertext: 1996-1999 - "(...) a series of essays about hypertext in the late '90s. There weren't blogs back then, and HypertextNOW wasn't a precisely a blog, but it's something similar." (Mark Bernstein)

Posted on February 21, 2005 | Permalink

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." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox)

Posted on January 03, 2005 | Permalink

W3C Tenth Anniversary

"Hypertext '91 Conference in San Antonio, Texas (USA). TBL paper on Web only accepted as poster session." (Anniversary Conference)

Posted on December 03, 2004 | Permalink

A Comparison of Hyperstructures: Zzstructures, mSpaces, and Polyarchies

"Hypermedia applications tend to use simple representations for navigation: most commonly, nodes are organized within an unconstrained graph, and users are presented with embedded links or lists of links. Recently, new data structures have emerged which may serve as alternative models for both the organization, and presentation, of hypertextual nodes and links. In this paper, we consider zzstructures, mSpaces, and polyarchies from the perspective of graph theory, and compare these models formally." - (Michael J. McGuffin and M.C. Schraefel) - courtesy of ui designer

Posted on October 27, 2004 | Permalink

Twin Media: Hypertext Structure Under Pressure

"This essay explores issues that arise in composing a long argumentative hypertext that is connected with a book on the same subject. (...) Although the situation of the hypertext being discussed is somewhat unique, in fact hypertext structure is always under pressure from print habits of reading and writing, especially in scholarly writing, so the issues discussed here are widely relevant." (David Kolb)

Posted on September 23, 2004 | Permalink

Facilitating the Evolution of our Collective IQ: What Universities and Professional Societies Can Do 

From Hypertext '04 : Douglas Engelbart keynote presentation slides. - "Human capabilities depend upon their augmentation systems" (Hypertext '04)

Posted on August 20, 2004 | Permalink

Visions of Xanadu: Paul Otlet (1868-1944) and Hypertext

"The paper discusses Otlet's concept of the Office of Documentation and, as examples of an approach to actual hypertext systems, several special Offices of Documentation set up in the International Office of Bibliography. In his Traité de Documentation of 1934, one of the first systematic treatises on what today we would call information science, Otlet speculated imaginatively about online communications, text-voice conversion and what is needed in computer work stations, though of course he does not use this terminology." (W. Boyd Rayward - The Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Posted on August 15, 2004 | Permalink

The Case of Paul Otlet, Pioneer of Information Science, Internationalist, Visionary: Reflections On Biography

"The author takes as his point of departure his studies of Paul Otlet, co-founder of the present International Federation for Information and Documentation (FID) and The Union of International Associations, developer of the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC), theorist of 'Documentation', and pioneer of information science. Drawing on these studies his purpose is to examine aspects of the art and scholarship of biography, of the processes of research and imagination that it involves, especially: recognising an appropriate subject and determining an approach to it, the problem of evidence and the frames of reference within which evidence is deployed, the personal involvement that develops between the subject and the biographer, and biography's final goal of historical and personal understanding." (W. Boyd Rayward - The Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Posted on August 15, 2004 | Permalink

A Cosmology for a Different Computer Universe: Data Model, Mechanisms, Virtual Machine and Visualization Infrastructure

"The computing world is based on one principal system of conventions -- the simulation of hierarchy and the simulation of paper. The article introduces an entirely different system of conventions for data and computing. zzstructure is a generalized representation for all data and a new set of mechanisms for all computing. The article provides a reference description of zzstructure and what we hope to build on it. (...) Simplicity is not cheap, and simple design is very difficult." (Theodor Holm Nelson - Journal of Digital Information: 5.1)

Posted on July 21, 2004 | Permalink

Future Visions of Common-Use Hypertext: Introduction to a special issue

"This special issue arises out of a panel held during the ACM Hypertext '03 conference at the University of Nottingham. Panellists were invited to sell their vision as 'the next big thing' in hypertext, either to supplement, augment or supplant 'modern day' systems, which, let's face it, is the Web." (Helen Ashman and Adam Moore - Journal of Digital Information 5.1)

Posted on July 21, 2004 | Permalink

Writing the Web

"The main thesis of this paper is that it is desirable to make the creation of Web content an integral and natural part of the daily chores of an intellectual worker, integrated with the normal production and management of data and information, making the Web not just a publishing medium but fundamentally a collector and organizer of personal data and documents." (Angelo di Iorio and Fabio Vitali - Journal of Digital Information 5.1)

Posted on May 28, 2004 | Permalink

Ted Nelson

"After taking a computer course at Harvard in 1960, Ted Nelson began a mystical journey. He started exploring the possibility of liberating text from paper, of developing a means whereby writers could harness text in a manner closer to human cognitive patterns: i.e., the way words flowed through our minds. In 1965 Nelson coined the term hypertext. Ultimately, in his brilliant 1974 book, 'Computer Lib/Dream Machines', he laid down the foundation for a communications theory transcending text. Hypertext became hypermedia. Imagery and sound played roles equal to text. Nelson realized that personal computers with multimedia capabilities must burst the boundaries of artistically rendering internal reflection." (Peter Schmideg)

Posted on May 25, 2004 | Permalink

The Indirect Authoring Paradigm: Bringing Hypertext into the Web

"Building hypertext systems to provide the required functionality to write hypertexts has always been a goal of hypertext research. The parallel development of hypertext research prototypes and the World Wide Web has resulted in repeated attempts to replace the Web or offer world-wide all-purpose services to augment the Web with 'missing' functionality." (Hartmut Obendorf - Journal of Digital Information)

Posted on April 08, 2004 | Permalink

Writing with Images

"The sudden emergence and explosive growth since 1994 of the World Wide Web as a graphics-heavy medium is but the latest of several surges that marked the 'rise of the visual' in the twentieth century. Each of these waves was enabled by new technology and each changed the world' practices before it changed its theories. Photo-offset printing unleashed the first wave of photograph in mass distribution newspapers and illustrated magazines.Then the technology for making moving pictures developed into a world-wide industry. Television opened a main pipe line into the homes of the developed world, and video recorders brought films from the theater into the home as well. A typewriters became computers, sprouting monitors and connected to other computers around the world, the flow of visual information and entertainment reaches into the offices of corporations and bureaucracies around the world." (University of Washington)

Posted on February 05, 2004 | Permalink

Where our hypermedia really should go!

"There is something going on called XML. Which some say is HTML done right. I think that is a good description. A wrong thing done to absolute perfection. I have been on the mailing list of the XML linking committee. Which is endeavoring to create some kind of a specification or a standard for  hyper documents that will appropriately represent connected structure. My experience is reading convinces me further, as if I had not known already that I want nothing to do with it. What I am  doing continues in another direction." (Ted Nelson - Engelbart's Colloquium: The Unfinished Revolution)

Posted on January 20, 2004 | Permalink

Notes from Hypertext 03

"I'm at the Hypertext 03 conference in Nottingham this week, keeping rough notes online." (Matt Web - interconnected) - courtesy of ben hyde

Posted on September 01, 2003 | Permalink

Hypertext '03 Conference List of Papers & Poster Presentations

The Fourteenth Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia: August 26-30, 2003 - Nottingham, UK (ACM SIGWeb)

Posted on August 21, 2003 | Permalink

Web Ignored Lessons From Hypertext

According to Mark Bernstein: "Colour is inappropriate for links as it conflates emphasis and linking, while blue is a particularly bad choice as it is the hardest colour to read, making the link content less obvious (...)" (Ann Light - Usability News)

Posted on April 09, 2003 | Permalink

On the Trail of the Memex: Vannevar Bush, Weblogs and the Google Galaxy

"Hypertext as mediated by the Web browser has not proved to embody the qualities of the ideal post-structural text longed for by literary theorists such as George Landow; neither has the World Wide Web fulfilled the document-association function of the memex, the hypothetical research tool Vannevar Bush described in his 1945 essay, As We May Think." (dichtung-digital - Dennis G. Jerz) - courtesu of webword

Posted on February 20, 2003 | Permalink

Hypertext Criticism: Writing about Hypertext

"Electronic literature today is hypertextual and more, finding inspiration in visual arts, animation, games and cinema." (Susana Tosca and Jill Walker - Journal of Digital Information 3.3)

Posted on February 18, 2003 | Permalink

A Wandering Tread: Exploring Hyperfiction

"Hyperfiction is a narrative form that makes use of the characteristics of the Internet to tell a story." (Carolien van den Bos) - courtesy of hypertextkitchen

Posted on January 03, 2003 | Permalink

Center for Digital Storytelling

"(..) a non-profit project development, training, and research organization dedicated to assisting people in using digital media to tell meaningful stories from their lives." (About CDS)

Posted on October 28, 2002 | Permalink

Hypertext Links: Whither Thou Goest, and Why

"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." (Claire Harrison - FirstMonday 7.10)

Posted on October 09, 2002 | Permalink

The Second Bernies Awards

"The Bernies award is an encouragement to engineers and scientists to produce hypertexts." (Mark Bernstein)

Posted on September 27, 2002 | Permalink

The History of Hypertext

"The history of hypertext begins in July of 1945." (WWW Beyond The Basics - Shahrooz Feizabadi)

Posted on September 23, 2002 | Permalink

A hyperlink knows no depth

Unexpected ramifications of deep linking (NUblog)

Posted on August 20, 2002 | Permalink

Weblog Kitchen

"The Weblog Kitchen explores current research in weblogs, wikis, and other hypertext systems." (Mark Bernstein)

Posted on July 03, 2002 | Permalink

Foreseeing The Future: The Legacy of Vannevar Bush

"This article presaged the idea of the Internet and the World Wide Web and was directly influential on the fathers of the hypertext and the Internet as we know it today." (Erin Malone - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted on June 20, 2002 | Permalink

Moving from Flatland to Hyperspace: The 'Evolution of a Mindset'

"(...) I tend to think of my days designing for print as living in Flatland." (Meg Cole - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted on May 14, 2002 | Permalink

Hypertext Structure as the Event of Connection

This paper (...) won the SIGWEB Ted Nelson Newcomer Award. (Adrian Miles - JODI 2.3)

Posted on March 20, 2002 | Permalink

Linking in Context

"This paper explores the idea of dynamically adding multi-destination links to Web pages, based on the context of the pages and users, as a way of assisting Web users in their information finding and navigation activities." (Samhaa R. El-Beltagy et al. - JODI 2.3)

Posted on March 20, 2002 | Permalink

Adaptive Hypertext Networks That Learn The Common Semantics Of Their Users

"The Internet is steadfastly becoming a highly popular medium for the distribution and communication of ideas and knowledge." (Johan Bollen - VU Brussel BE)

Posted on November 14, 2001 | Permalink

Hypertext Garden

"The attention of the audience is a writer's most precious possession (...)" (Mark Bernstein - Eastgate)

Posted on November 09, 2001 | Permalink

A Pragmatics of Links

"This paper applies the linguistic theory of relevance to the study of the way links work, insisting on the lyrical quality of the link-interpreting activity" (Susana Tosca - JoDI 1.6)

Posted on September 13, 2001 | Permalink

Card Shark And Thespis

"(...) exotic tools for hypertext narrative" (Mark Bernstein)

Posted on September 04, 2001 | Permalink

The Psychology of Cyberspace

"(...) a list of links to all the articles and pages in the hypertext book" (John Suler, Ph.D.)

Posted on June 03, 2001 | Permalink

Comprehension, Coherence and Strategies in Hypertext and Linear Text

"(...) the evaluation of hypertext from the perspective of text comprehension" (Peter W. Foltz - Dept. of Psychology -New Mexico State University)

Posted on January 08, 2001 | Permalink

Where are the Hypertexts?

"(...) More than legible: on links that readers don't want to follow" (Mark Bernstein of Eastgate Systems)

Posted on October 06, 2000 | Permalink

Concept Maps as Hypermedia Components

Brian R. Gaines and Mildred L. G. Shaw 1995 (More from Knowledge Science Institute - University of Calgary)

Posted on June 23, 2000 | Permalink