Guided tours and on-line presentations: how authors make existing hypertext intelligible for readers

ABSTRACT

Hypertext systems like NoteCards provide facilities for authoring large networks. But they provide little support for the associated task of making these networks intelligible to future readers. Presentation conventions may be imported from other related media, but because the conventions have not yet been negotiated within a community of hypertext readers and writers, they provide only a partial solution to the problem of guiding a reader through an existing network of information. In this paper, we will discuss how a recent facility, Guided Tours, has been used to organize hypertext networks for presentation. The use of Guided Tours in NoteCards has exposed a set of authoring issues, and has provided us with examples of solutions to the problems associated with on-line presentations.

REFERENCES

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.2 Design Tools and Techniques
          Subjects: User interfaces

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.1 MODELS AND PRINCIPLES
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL

General Terms:
Design, Human Factors