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Subject:Re. Hypertext pro and con From:Geoff Hart <geoff-h -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA> Date:Mon, 2 Oct 1995 12:15:41 LCL
Just to add my several coins to the discussion of
online and hypertext: the biggest problem with
hypertext in my personal experience (plus
anecdotal evidence from several users) is that
people find it hard to locate what they want using
links alone. Sure, it's fun to browse an
encyclopedia or the Web by following whatever
links take our fancy, but if the goal is to find
specific information, this is damn frustrating at
best.
If you're going to do hypertext, provide much more
than just a link: explain the link, ideally with
at least a few phrases. Provide a keyword search
function, with the keywords defined. Provide a
schema for the entire assembly of information,
perhaps in the form of a cognitive map of the
various interconnections. Think of this as a
roadmap. These are the biggest deficiencies in
most hypertexts that I've seen; there are likely
others.
--Geoff Hart @8^{)}
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Disclaimer: If I didn't commit it in print in one
of our reports, it don't represent FERIC's
opinion.
