What
is quality in hypertext? How, in other words, do we
judge a hypertext collection of documents (or web)
to be successful or unsuccessful, to be good or bad
as hypertext? How can we judge if a particular
hypertext achieves elegance or just mediocrity?
Those questions lead to another: what in particular
is good about hypertext? To answer these questions
this paper proposes a number of basic rules,
including (1) Individual lexias should have an
adequate number of links, (2) Following links
should provide a satisfying experience, (3) The
pleasure of following links comes from a perception
of coherence, (4) such coherence can take the form
of analogy, (5) Individual lexias should satisfy
readers and yet prompt them to want to follow
additional links, (6) The document should exemplify
true hypertextuality by providing multiple lines of
organization, and (7) hyper-document should fully
engage the hypertextual capacities of the
particular software environment
employed.
The
paper also asks if (1) hypertext has a
characteristic or necessary form of metaphoric
organization? (2) how important are gaps between
documents to successful hypertext? (3) What is the
relation between animated text and
hypertext.
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