Introductions to Hypertext

CERN

Hypertext Terms

A glossary of terms used in hypertext.

Deemer, Charles [1994]

What is Hypertext?

Eastgate Systems

Hypertext Courses
A compendium of hypertext courses for students and instructors.

Hatfield, Len

HyperLiterature / Hypertheory

A course from Virginia Tech., USA.

Unit HT

What is Hypertext?

W3C

HTML Home Page
Pointer to the W3C specification for HTML, guidelines on how to use HTML to the best effect, and pointers to related work at W3C.

History of Hypertext

Barger, Jorn [1996]

HyperTerrorist's Timeline of Hypertext History

A history that begins in the age of writing (3000 BCE) and that travels through the age of printing, the age of electricity and the age of the first computers, and ends in the micro era, the WYSIWYG era and the hypertext era, the WWWeb and Netscape era. The final stage is called the age of hype.

Bush, Vannevar [1945]

As We May Think

In: Atlantic Monthly, July 1945.
This article is the starting point for hypertext and literary theory. See Bush Symposium, MIT, Oct. 12-13, 1995.

Dam, Andries van [1976]

FRESS - File Retrieval and Editing System
Information on a pioneering hypertext document system, developed in the late 1960s, that allowed authors to create links within any text document or among any number of text documents. FRESS was the first hypertext system that worked.

Landow, George P.

Hypertext at Brown

Since the work of Ted Nelson and Andries van Dam in the 1960s, Brown University (USA) has played a major rol in the design and development of both hypertext systems and materials. Landow leads us to some highlights of hypertext at Brown.

[1992/5] Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Literary Theory and Technology

Baltimore & London: John Hopkins UP.
In this amplified and updated version of chapter one Landow discusses the history of the concept of hypertext. Like many others who write on hypertext and literary theory, he argues we must abandon conceptual systems founded upon ideas of center, margin, hierarchy, and linearity and replace them by ones of multilinearity, nodes, links and networks. This paradigm shift marks a revolution in human thought which has profound implications for literarute, education, and politics.

Nelson, Ted [1960-1988]

Project Xanadu
Some facts and dates.

Norris, Drew

Vonnegut, Pynchon, and Cortazar: A Generation of Proto-Hypertext Authors [MOVED TO ??]

Some writers have been wrestling with non-linearity, presence of authors and the introduction of choices. In their texts they anticipated on the main elements of the hypertextual revolution.

Project Xanadu: History

Rosenzweig, Roy

The Road to Xanadu: Public and Private Pathways on the History Web

Simpson, Rosemary

Memex and Beyond

Index for the history of hypertext research. An important site that integrates historical records of and current research in hypermedia. The name of the site honors the 1945 publication of Vannevar Bush "As We May Think" in which he proposed a hypertext engine called the Memex.

Zachary, Pascal G. [1997]

Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century
Free Press.

Hypertext Theory & Research

Aarseth, Espen J. [1997]

Introduction: Ergodic Literature
A sample chapter from the book Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Published by the Johns Hopkins University Press.

Barry, Jeff [1995]

The Hypertext Markup Language (HTML): Raising ASCII Text to a New Level of Usability.

In: EJS 1(2), 1995.
A tutorial on HTML tags with examples of their use and guidelines for organizing hypertext documents. Barry suggests what types of documents are suitable for the Web and explores the future of HTML.

Bellamy, Craig [1999] (Department of Visual Communication, RMIT University)

The Web, Hypertext and History: A Critical Introduction
In: Electronic Journal of Australian and New Zealand History. A paper presented at the symposium 'Virtual Histories, Real Time Challenges', July 1999.
Information technology impacts upon every profession, from accounting, to law, to teaching, to publishing. It also plays a major role in how historians research and communicate history. Bellamy shows what hypertext can mean for a historian. Hypertext can provide the historian with a whole new set of tools to explore, explain, and understand the past.

Benschop, Albert [1997-2003] (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands)

Lineaire en Hypertekst
Article on the difference of writing/reading linear and hypertext, the history of hypertext, and some navigational problems. It's a chapter of an electronic book on the Peculiarities of Cyberspace, Building Blocks for an Internet Sociology.

Bernstein, Mark

[1995] Hypertexts with Characters

Linear texts speak with a single voice and present a single viewpoint. Hypertexts introduce a dramatic multiplicity of voices and perspectives that engage the reader and each other. In this paper Bernstein proposes a framework for creating and discussing dramatic hypertexts in which separate characters participate fully and directly. The most interesting issues arise when characters are permitted to respond to other characters and to urge the reader to follow different trajectories through the hypertext.

[2002] A Romantic View of Weblogs

A review of The Weblog Handbook by Rebecca Blood.

[2002] Electronic Reading

Skeptics complain that hypertexts are hard to read in bed or in the bathtub. Bernstein argues that they're all wet.

[2002] Span of Attention

Pundits fear that hypertexts, like television, shorten our attention span. They overlook an important fact: we are witnessing a spectacular renaissance of large-scale narrative. Throughout the world and throughout the media, ver large stories are succeeding - articitaclly and commercially - as never before.

Birkerts, Sven [1994]

The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in An Electronic Age.
Boston/London: Faber & Faber.
Will hypertext ever be accepted by a mass readership as something more than a sophisticated Nintendo game played with language? What will readers do when they are faced with the choice between univocal and polyvocal, linear and "open" texts? It could be that they will opt for the more traditional package and 'that the reading act will remain rooted in the original giver-receiver premise because this offers readers something they want: a chance to subject the anarchic subjectivity to another's disciplined imagination, a chance to be taken in unsuspected directions under the guidance of some singular sensibility.' But the stable hierarchies of the printed page - one of the defining norms of the conventional local world - are being superseded by the rush of impulses through freshly minted circuits. 'The displacement of the page by the screen is not yet total ...but the large scale tendency in that direction has to be obvious to anyone who looks.'

Bolter, Jay David

Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing [1991]
Hypertext edition, on disc. Cambridge, MA: Estgate Systems. Book editie: Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbauam.
The hypertext-pioneer Bolter examines the technology of reading and writing. He traces the history of writing from papyrus roll, to codex book, to print text, and finally to electronic text. The print text can be regarded as the last stage in the development of linear, hierarchical presentation of material. "Through printing, we have come more and more to anthropomorphize books, to regard each book as a little person with a name, a place (in the library), and a bibliographic life of its own" [p.86]. The rise of print text in Europe was accompanied by other developments in experience as well as representations of the world which reflected changed concepts of space and time. Bolter examines the computer as a new medium for symbolic communication. "What is unnatural in print, becomes natural in the electronic medium and will soon no longer need saying at all, because it can be shown" [p.143].

Bolter, Jay David / Grusin, Richard

Remediation - Understandig New Media

New digital media refashion or "remediate" older visual and verbal forms. In this electronic book the authors analyse how the WWW refashions graphic design, printing, radio, film, and television. It includes a video on remediation.

Bos, Carolien van den [2000]

Een zwervende draad

Analysis of the narrative peculiarities of hyperfiction. Hyperfiction is a narrative form that make use of the characteristics of the internet to tell a story. The story is divided into segments that arre connected to each other by hyperlinks. Readers have a choice between multile links, and thereby between multiple fragments — this gives them influence on the sequnece in which they read the story. The text of the story loses its 'fixed finality'.

Burnett, Kathleen [1993]

Toward a Theory of Hypertextual Design [abstract]

In: Postmodern Culture, 2(3), January 1993.
"Hypertext is rhizomorphic in all its characteristics. Its power derives from its flexibility and variability; from its ability to incorporate, transmute and transcend any traditional tool or structure. Like the rhizome, it is frightening because it is amorphous. The hierarchical systems we are accustomed to are definitional--they are centers of power. Knowledge of the hierarchy engenders authority; corrupted authority breeds despotism. Knowledge of the rhizome as a totality is impossible, precisely because "totality" and other absolutes have no meaning in a rhizome. The rhizome is as individual as the individual in contact with it. It is that individual's perception, that individual's map, that individual's understanding. It is also, and at the same time, a completely different something--another individual's perception, another individual's map, another individual's understanding. It provides no structure for common understanding."

Davison, Graeme [1997]

History and Hypertext

In: The Electronic Journal of Australian and New Zealand History.
An analysis of the history and meaning of hypertext from the perspective of a historian. Narrative is a form of thinking deeply bound up with the technology of print and the experience of reading. Will hypertext and the internet erode that sense of time as a continuous deposit of incribed memory which underlines our sense of history ? Birkerts suggested that our perception of history inevitably will alter as more and more of our communications involve us in network processes: 'Changes in information storage and access are bound to impinge on our historical memory' [Birkerts 1994:129]. For Birkerts historical time is a kind of archaeological deposit of books on a library shelf. For Graeme it is only a bibliophile - even a bibliomaniac - who could seriously argue that without a book or a library we would lose all sense of historical time. He argues that for centuries historians have been using a primitive form of hypertext -- the footnote. If we could track the eye movements and mental processes of a historian reading a history book -- from text to notes, from introduction to index, to text again -- we would observe that the process of reading even a narrative history has never been linear. Graema argues against the evangelists of hypertext who think that hypertext will free the reader to construct knowledge for him/herself. Hypertexts may permit the user to search the text in diverse ways, the paths they follow are nonetheless built into the design of the hypertext, and freedom they allow may be less real than it seems. "Indeed, being hidden and inexplicit, the design of the hypertext may arguably be more coercive than the more explicitly didactic text of the book." The most important advantage of hypertext for historians is that it offers the potential for thinking about historical relationships in new configurations: "we can think of multiple beginnings and endings, and exploit the labyrinthine linkages of the hypertext to represent them." But in the end, what counts, is not the machine that allows us to make connections, but the power of mind to know which connnections are meaningful and which are not.

Drexler, K. Eric [1995/6]

Hypertext Publishing and the Evolution of Knowledge
Social Intelligence 1(2): 87-120.
Knowledge is valuable and grows by an evolutionary process. The evolution of knowledge in society is affected by the media. A suitable hypertext publishing medium can speed the evolution of knowledge by aiding the expression, transmission, and evaluation of ideas. The direct benefits of using a hypertextual medium should bring emergent benefits, helping to form intellectual communities, to build consensus, and to extend the range and efficiency of intellectual effort.

Eastgate Systems

Commercial offerings of Storyspace hypertext resources. Storyspace is a hypertext writing environment that is especially well suited to large, complex, and challenging hypertexts. Eastgate creates new hypertext technologies and publishes serious hypertext (fiction and non-fiction).

Emigholz, Heinz [2002]

Interaktive Narration - ein Widerspruch in sich selbst?
A lecture on interactive narration as a productive example of a contradictio in adjecto.

Formaro, Tom

Argumentation on the World Wide Web

Exploration of the ways hypertext and the Internet change our style of writing.

Have, Paul ten [1999]

Structuring writing for reading: hypertext and the reading body

Paper for the International conference: Ethnomethodology: East and West. Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan, August 21-23. In: Human Studies 22: 273-98.
An examination of some textual devices that writers may use to pre-structure the activities of their readers. HTML is used as an 'explicating device' to explore how writers can provide reading instruction, and how these can be experienced by readers. Structuring devices like paragraphs and sections, and hypertextual elements like notes and references are investigated in detail. Ten Have aspires to contribute to an ethnomethodology of textual practices.

Heibach, Christiane [2000]

Literatur im Internet: Theorie und Praxis einer kooperativen Ästhetik [pdf]

Heim, Michael

[1999] Transmogrification

Discusses design issues as cyberspace becomes visualized data, and meaning arrives in spatial as well as in verbal expressions. It concentrates on the design of avatars (animated graphics by which humans 'incarnate' themselves in real-time #D computer worlds on the internet).

Hypertext Kitchen

Ivanow, Kristo [1995]

The Search for a Theory of Hypermedia
In: D. Dahlbom et.al. (eds.) [1995] Proceedings of the Information Systems Research Seminar in Scandinavia IRIS'18, pp. 283-293. Gothenburg Studies in Informatics, Report 7.

Joyce, Georg Stuart [1999]

Authoring as Architecture. Toward a Hyperfiction poetics

Kaplan, Nancy

[1995-1997] E-Literacies: Politexts, Hypertexts and Other Cultural Formations in the Late Age of Print or mirror

Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine, 2(3), March 1995.
An exploration of the reading and writing process specific to electronic texts and an examination of the academic debates over the issue. Kaplan is Professor and Director of the School of Information Arts and Technologies at the University of Baltimore, USA.

[2001] Knowing Practice: A More Complex View of New Media Literacy

Kaplan examines the pervasive quest for invisible computers, applications, and interfaces in order toe mae a case for resisting the presure of standardize platforms for delivering on-line courses and other Web-based applications. She argues that too great a reduction of the cognitive challenge in the present may prevent people from developing effective learning strategies they can apply to future technologies. Seen from a constructivist perspective on learning the applications and interfaces must remain visible and accessible to knowledge workers if the are to develop new media literacies.

Kircz, Joost [1997]

Modularity: the next form of scientific information presentation?
A discussion of the various characteristics of print on paper in the light of the foreseeable changes to a more modular form of communication in an electronic environment. The conclusion is that the electronic information transfer wil be a transfer of well-defined, cognitive information modules.

Keep, Christopher/McLaughlin, Tim / Parmer, Robin [1993-2001]

The Electronic Labyrinth

Investigation on the history of hypertext systems. It includes an introduction in the non-linear tradition in literature.

Kendall, Robert

[1995] Writing for the New Millennium: The Birth of Electronic Literature

Poets & Writers Magazine, Nov./Dec. 1995.
The impact of hypertext and multimedia literature on the future of writing. "The computer —that remakable melting pot of all communication— has become another medium for expressing the incomparable beauty and power of the word". Poetry and technology are supposed not to mix, until we remember that writing itself is a technology. The technology of writing is changing in an age of electronic media, and literature is changing with it. How to stretch the boundaries of the written tradition using hypertext?

[1995] Hypertextual Dynamics in A Life Set for Two
In: Proceedings of the Seventh ACM Conference on Hypertext, Washington DC.
Discussion of how dynamic hypertext can emulate some of the workings of the mind.

[1999] Tales from the Hard Disk
Reflections on the appeal of electronic literature and the inherent relationships between poetry and computer code.

Kendall, Robert / Réty, Jean-Hugues

[2000] Toward an Organic Hypertext
In: Proceedings of the Eleventh ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia, San Antonio, Texas.
Discussion of Connection Muse, an adaptive hypertext system for poetry and fiction.

Kendall, Robert [1996]

Hypertextual Dynamics in A Life Set for Two

Proceedings of the Seventh ACM Conference on Hypertext (Washington, DC, 1996).
In most hypertexts the contents of nodes and the positions of links are fixed. Making these elements dynamic can help writers solve structural problems and help prevent navigational dilemmas for readers. Kendell's hypertext poem A Life Set for Two demonstrates several techniques for doing this. Floating links are positioned dynamically in response to the reader's progress. Variable nodes change their texts according to factors such as their context within the current reading. The texts of individual nodes are also influenced by global states: setttings that can be changed manually by the reader or automatically by the program. A compelling combination of poetry and programming.

Kircz, Joost /Harmsze, Frédérique [2000]

Modular scenarios in the electronic age

McAdams, Mindy / Berger, Stephanie [2001]

Hypertext

In: Journal of Electronic Publishing, published by the University of Michigan Press.

McGann, Jerome [1995]

The Rationale of Hypertext

Examination of the relation between hypertextuality and paper-based textuality in the context of literary documents, and especially the editing of literary documents.

McGann, Jerome [1996]

Radiant Textuality

"Has any of you written research in hypertext format? Would you accept a dissertation written in hypertext?" These questions reflected an anxiety that is common because of the startling impact of technological change on humanities and literary study. In McGann's vision, the anxiety grows from certain unhelpful and erroneous assumptions about the nature of the technology, on the one hand, and the traditional work of critical research and study on the other.

McHoul, Alec / Roe, Phil [1966]

Hypertext and reading cognition

Morgan, Wendy

Re-placing authority by desire: Novices reading and writing literary hypertext

A paper on the experiences of students with reading and writing hypertext. Students show strong emotional reactions on hypertext, both positive and negative: "I hate reading jumped things, but I love writing them". The story is based on a small pilot study that concentrated on the question whether and if so how the reading and writing of literary hypertexts would prompts students to a reconception of the nature of text and the practices of reading and writing.

[1999]Heterotopics: Towards a Grammer of Hyperlinks

Nelson, Ted [1993]

The Xanadu Ideal

Nelson explains why the Xanadu system is "completely different" from any other plan for multimedia and electronic literature. Nelson c.s. are striving to create "a unified, universal literature, available to everyone both as readers and contributors, instantly available everywhere, with the ability to publish connections freely. That is, anyone may publish footnotes, comments, disagreements, and anyone may quote, republish, anthologise and otherwise re-use everthing in the system -- provided that the republication stays within the Xanadu world."

Phelps, Katherine [1996/8]

Story Shapes for Digital Media

Project Xanadu

The original hypertext project, founded in 1960. Many people talk about "eliminating paper", but Ted Nelson has always meant it. He doesn't want to imitate paper on the screen (which has become the current interface), but going beyond paper to represent the connections which are present in the data.

Rosenberg, Jim [1994]

Navigating Nowhere / Hypertext Infrawhere

Siglink Newsletter 3, December 1994, pp. 16-19.
A discussion of various non-linear methods of structuring the lexia, including simultaneities and polylinearity. A distinction is drawn between the typical disjunctivity of the hypertext link and conjunctivity of simultaneities and relations.

Ryder, Martin [1995] (School of Education, University of Colorado at Denver, USA)

Production and Consumption of Meaning: The interplay between subject and object in open hypertext representation
Paper submitted to the conference: Semiotics as a Bridge between the Humanities and the Sciences, Victoria College, University of Toronto, November 2-5, 1995.
The use of external references connects our thoughts to the work of others. These links add value to our own utterances by elaborating upon the meaning behind our own expression. The thoughts we express are artifacts synthesized from the texts of other mindes. Ryder traces the technology of text from pre-history to the present, with a special focus oncurrent capabilities. The paper offers an analysis of constructed representations of meaning within the digital medium of hypertext and investigates the nature of value in an age of information.

Taylor, Mark C. / Saarinen, Esa [1993]

Imagologies: Media Philosophy. New York: Routledge.
Some extracts [Moved too ??].
See also the review of Bas Raijmakers in Mediamatic.

Unsworth, John [1994]

Electronic Scholarship or, Scholarly Publishing and the Public

In: Richard Finneran (ed.) [1994] The Literary Text in the Digital Age, Univ. of Michigan Press.

Usenet Groups

alt.hypertext of via Google Groups

Bibliographies on Hypertext

Eastgate

Hypertext Resources
An actual and comprehensive catalogue of links to resources on hypertext theory and design. Eastgate is the publisher of some of the best known hypertext fiction.

Goldpaugh, Tom

Hypertext Sites and Essays
An alphabetical list of annotated hypertext sites and essays.

Harpold, Terence [1991/6]

Hypertext and hypermedia: a selected bibliography

Ryder, Martin [1998]

Bibliography on Hypertext

Shumate, Michael

Hyperizons: The Hypertext Fiction Homepage

An annotated link collection that hasn't been updated lately.

Simpson, Rosemary

Bibliography

Stebelman, Scott (George Washington University, USA)

Hypertext and Hypermedia: A Select Bibliography

Last updates December 1997.

Voice of the Shuttle

Technology of Writing

Non-Linear Learning

Now the computers migrate from the office and home into the classroom, they bring with them many opportunities for educators. The conventional linear learning practices have been challenged by new ways of learning: non-linear learning or — as Ted Nelson would have it — non-sequential learning. Vannevar Bush has given us some idea on 'as we may think'. The human mind operates by association: "With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain." The hypertextual and multimedial repertoire allows us to duplicate this mental process artificially. In educational settings we can use the internet for instructional delivery, communications and searching. This section contains resources that explain the idea of non-linear modes of learning in virtual environments: 'As We May Learn'. It also informs on the problems with non-linear learning sites: user disorientation ('Lost in Cyberspace') and cognitive overload.

Center for Evaluation, Development, and Research (CEDR)

Educational Research

Cronin, P. [1997]

Learning and Assessment of Instruction
Unpublished report. Edinburgh: Univ. of Edinburgh, Center for Cognitive Science.

Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP) - Washington D.C., USA

• Quality on the Line [dec. 1999]
  With the rapid growth worldwide of teaching and learning on the Internet, more and more attention is being paid to the nature and quality of online higher education. This report, commissioned by the National Education Association, contains case studies of six colleges and universities that provide Internet-based degree programs.

• What is the Difference? [1999] [pdf]
  What's the difference between distance learning and traditional classroom-based instruction? This report reviews a broad array of research and articles published in the last decade to determine the overall quality of the analyses, the gaps in the research and the implications of the research for the future.

Interactions

New Visions of Human-Computer Interaction.

Jacobson, Michael J. et. al. [1995]

Learning with Hypertext Learning Environments: Theory, Design, and Research

Journal of Technology Education (JTE) [Full text and Free]

Lacuna Psychology

Educational Psychology - Resources

Marsli, Jan P. [1999] (London Guildhall University, UK)

Hypertext: Learning in Cyberspace

MENO - Multimedia, Education and Narrative Organisation

An empirical study of the design features of interactive multimedia products for education and their effects on learner perception and performance. This project is part of the ESRS Research Programma in Cognitive Engineering (UK).

Miller, Susan M. / Miller, Kenneth L. [1999]

Using Instructional Theory to Facilitate Communication in Web-based Courses
Educational Technology & Society 2(3).

Moore, Julie [1999]

Linear vs. Non-Linear Learning

Peach, Andrea [1999] (Georgetown College)

Learning with the WWW: What does the research show?

Schank, Roger /Cleary, Chip

Engines for Educators

Siegel, Marcelle / Derry, Sharon et al. [2000]

Promoting Teachers' Flexible Use of the Learning Sciences through Case-Based Problem Solving on the WWW

Sims, Heather

Hypertext in the Secondary School Classroom
Sims examines the benefits, issues, and implications of hypertext usage in the secondary English classroom. It is an informational resource for educators and others interested in the field of education.

Spiro, Rand J. / Feltovich, Paul J. / Jacobson, Michael 1. / Coulson, Richard L. [1991]

Educational Technology May 1991, pp 243-33.
Cognitive Flexibility, Constructivism, and Hypertext: Random Access Instruction for Advanced Knowledge Acquisition in Ill-Structured Domains
The central argument of this paper is that there is a common basis for the failure of many instructional systems. The claim is that these deficiencies in the outcomes of learning, are strongly influenced by underlying biases and assumptions in the design of instruction. As alternative a constructivist theory of learning and instruction is presented that emphasizes the real world complexity and ill-structuredness of many knowledge domains. The authors develop a set of principal recommendations for the development of instructional hypertext systems to promote succesfull learning of difficult subject matter.

Tam, Maureen [2000] (Lingnan University, China)

Constructivism, Instructional Design, and Technology: Implications for Transforming Distance Learning
Educational Technolgy & Society 3(2). ISSN 1436-4522.
An examination of the characteristics and value of designed instruction grounded in the constructivist theory. The author tries to establish an alignment between pedagogical and technological considerations in support of the assumptions arising from constructivism.

WebDesign and Navigation Structures

Accessibility

Bobby

A free public service web-based tool that analyzes web pages for their accessibility to people with disabilities. Bobby is offered by CAST, Center for Applied Special Technology,

W3C

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
Guidelines that explain how to make Web content accessible to people with disabilities.

Center for Information Technology Accomodation (CITA)

Web Page Accessibility Resources
Suggestions for sites to test your webpage or website for accessibility.

Ambler, Scott W. [1998]

User Interface Design Tips

Bernstein, Mark [1998]

Hypertext Gardens: Delightful Vistas
A wonderful site that goes beyond the Navigation Problem. Hypertext writers and researchers used to be concerned that hypertexts would enmesh readers in a confusing tangle of links. They call it the 'Navigation Problem'. To solve this problem many roads were travelled: by keeping links simple; by using fewer links; by organizing the links very rigidly (hierarchically); by providing many navigational tools (navigation bars and menus everywhere). "In time, experience with actual hypertext and the development of the Web suggested that the Navigation Problem is less forbidding than it had seemed." Readers/learners weren't getting lost in cyberspace. Occasional disorientation is common in all kinds of serious writing, reading and learning. Bernstein argues against rigid designers who consider irregularity a mistake to be corrected. "Each place should behave exactly as expected, each path should be clearly marked, and a few familiar paths should suffice for all." Bernstein emphasizes the virtue of irregularity. "Today's Web designers are taught to avoid irregularity, but in a hypertext, as in a garden, it is the artful combination of regularity and irregularity that awakens interest and maintains attention." In 'Seven Lessons from Gardening' he explains how we can offer the promise of the unexpected without the threat of the wilderness.

Boling, Elizabeth [1997]

Web Site Design Profiles: Guidelines that Make Sense for You
A review of guidelines pages that yields many redundant point, but also a bewildering array of general, specific and sometimes contradictory bits of advice for the designer.

Center for Advanced Instructional Media (CAIM)

• Web Design + Development

• Yale Style Manual

CNET.com

Web Building
Articles, manuals, tips and tricks, and resources for web builders.

Distance Education Clearinghouse

Instructional Design for Distance Education
A collection of links to sites and articles on instructional desing in distance education.

Flanders, Vincent

Web Pages That Suck

The purpose of the site is to help people design effective and aesthetically pleasing web pages. The method is somwhat different. Flanders believes that if someone is exposed to bad web page design they'll be less likely to use these techniques in the pages they create.

Flavell, Alan (Glasgow University, UK)

Appropriate use of ALT texts in HTML

Fleming, Jennifer [1998]

Designing for Users
Excerpt from Chapter 2 of Jennifer Fleming, Web Navigation: Designing the User Experience.
Fleming advises you to narrow your focus when it comes to defining your audience and then center your design around this group's behaviors and preferences. And she introduces another Web design method, participatory design.

Fluids

Future Lines of User Interface Decision Support Group
Fluids is a project in the Telematic Engineering sector of the Telematics Application Programme managed by the European Commission (DGXIII). The project provides a software environment for building intelligent interfaces for decision support systems by using reusable building blocks and a metholodolgy for designing and developing interface models.

Gillespie, Joe

Web Page Design for Designers (WPDFD)
A site about designing for the WWW, with a particular emphasis on graphic design and content rather than on technology. The site contains editorials and review on Web design issues and products, a general reference section and a rich source of links to other design related topics.

IIRG - Interface Interest & Research Group - Indiana University, USA

A group of instructional designers interested in practical application of research to the design of instructional and performance support software.

Karp, Tony

Art and the Zen of Web Sites
Some wisdom for designers and some good advice. For instance: "If you really believe that it's okay to change the meaning of interface elements, then it's a good thing you're designing web pages and not airplane cockpits" [Vincent Van Gui].

Levine, Rick (Sun Systems)

Writing HTML
A cookbook for helping people create better web pages.

Morris, Charlie [1998]

Nav 101
No matter how good a site looks, or how much useful information it offers, if it doesn't have a sensible navigation scheme, it will confuse visitors and chase them away. Morris prefers a simple, understandable navigation scheme based on three basic principles: tell people exactly what is available on your site; help them get to the parts they want quickly; and make it easy to request additional information.

Nielsen, Jakob [1996-1999]

Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design

Nielson (Sunsoft Distinguished Engineer) writes a monthly column at useit.com.

Nielsen, Jakob / Schemenaur, P.J. / Fox, Jonathan

Writing for the web

Writing for the web is very different from writing for print because most users scan the page instead of reading word-for-word. The authors give specific instructions how to write for the web.

Peterson, Constance J. [2000]

Seven Steps to Easier Web Navigation

Richmond, Alan

Web Authoring Style Guide

A great guide to create web sites with HTML, CGI, Java, JavaScript, and Graphics.

Rosenfeld, Louis / Morville, Peter [1998]

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-scale Web Sites.
O'Reilly & Associated.
A book about applying the principles of architecture and library science to web site design. Each web site is like a public building, available for tourists and regulars alike to breeze through at their leisure. The job of the architect is to set up the framework for the site to make it comfortable and inviting for people to visit, relax in, and perhaps even return to someday. You can learn how to merge aesthetics and mechanics to design web sites that "work". The site offers a table of contents, a sample chapter ("Introduction to Information Architecture"), and an author interview.

Siegel, David

Creating Killer Web Sites

Sociosite

Internet for Designers
Resources for professional web builders.

Timerlake, Sean

The Basics of Navigation

Web Design Guide Tutorials

Tutorial voor beginners and professionals, on design, speed, style, content, coding, navigation, and promotion.

WebMaster

Web Writing Style Resources

Journalists and academics have their own style guides. This is a style guide for HTML-writers on the internet.

Editor	dr. Albert Benschop Social & Behavioral Studies University of Amsterdam
Created	May, 2000
Last modified	01st March, 2006