Usability expert Jakob Nielsen has published a call to revive advanced hypertext on the web. Although I have some minor quibbles with some of his assertions (tabs aren’t useful on large displays) this is one of the best articles Nielsen has written in the past couple years.
As Nielsen notes, the web has been limited to uni-directional links since its inception and there have been very few attempts to advance the state of the art with regard to online hypertext. In fact, early browser developers moved quicly to remove advancing features. The removal of Mosaic’s annotation functionality comes immediately to mind.
Nielsen proposes fat links (links that point to more than a single page); typed links (different link types for different purposes); representing information architecture explicitly with structural commands; true overview maps with you-are-here, footprint, and search density markers; and big screen design (what Ted Nelson referred to as overthrowing the tyranny of the page).
If you’re involved with web development at any level, take a look at Nielsen’s article and add to this crucial conversation.
As soon as I can find the time, I intend to publish the relevant bits (and there are a lot of them, albeit all pre-web) of my first two books, Macintosh Hypermedia: Reference Guide and Macintosh Hypermedia: Uses and Implementations, on this website.
0 responses. Comments closed for this article.