Linking with Meaning: Ontological Hypertext for Scholars

The links in ontological hypermedia are defined according to the relationships between real-world objects. An ontology that models the significant objects in a scholar’s world can be used toward producing a consistently interlinked research literature. Currently the papers that are available online are mainly divided between subject- and publisher-specific archives, with little or no interoperability. This paper addresses the issue of ontological interlinking, presenting two experimental systems whose hypertext links embody ontologies based on the activities of researchers and scholars

METHODOLOGIES FOR DESIGNING AND DEVELOPING HYPERMEDIA APPLICATIONS

Hypermedia design, as any other design activity, may be observed according to two points of view: methods which suggest milestones to guide the designer's work and process which concerns the actual detailed behavior of the designer at work. Cognitive studies assess that mental processes involved in any design process show widely shared human characteristics regardless to the used design method. Thereby, they provide general keys to help designers. Thus, a hypertext design environment should equally consider the two dimensions of a hypertext design activity, in particular it should support the natural design process specificities, mainly the incremental and opportunist aspects. The paper focuses on the hypertext design as a computer supported human activity. It examines what is general both in the design methods and in the design process of hypertexts in order to determine which general features are helpful to designers. This analysis has raised from the observation of the behavior of MacWeb users during design tasks. It is related to sound and well known results in cognitive science. The paper also describes how the proposed features are implemented in the MacWeb system.Information Systems Working Papers Serie

An investigation of web-based hypermedia design support: methods and tools

Since the Internet networking was first established, the World Wide Web (or WWW) provides a new opportunity to deliver information and to communicate with others. Therefore, many organisations and industries have joined this exciting technology to take advantage of the Web. In recent years, the opportunity has arisen for other tasks to be carried out on the Web apart from delivering information. As the Web applications and documents have become larger and more complex, they have experienced many design and development problems which often lead to very high maintenance cost. To improve the quality of Websites and the structure of information, the designers need structured design methods, guidelines, and tools to assist their work. Some researchers have proposed hypermedia design methods and guidelines, which contain development cycle with formal design techniques to assist the construction of Web page designs. To overcome the design and development problems, this research is carried out by surveying currently available design methods. It shows the ways to apply these methods for developing structured Web sites. The results of this research led to identifying the design stages involved in developing Web sites using hypermedia methods. It also presents a CASE tool to provide a development environment for producing Web pages based on hypermedia design stages. This encourages Web designers to apply structured hypermedia design methods to improve the quality of design and to reduce the maintenance cost. The thesis is relevant for end-users, Web designers from organisations, institutes, and institutes for those who want to apply structured hypermedia design methods for producing their Web documents

MESH: an object-oriented approach to hypermedia modeling and navigation.

This paper introduces the MESH approach to hypermedia modeling and navigation, which aims at relieving the typical drawbacks of poor maintainability and user disorientation. The framework builds upon two fundamental concepts. The data model combines established entity-relationship and object-oriented abstractions with proprietary concepts into a formal hypermedia data model. Uniform layout and link typing specifications can be attributed and inherited in a static node typing hierarchy, whereas both nodes and links can be submitted dynamically to multiple complementary classifications. In the context-based navigation paradigm, conventional navigation along static links is complemented by run-time generated guided tours, which are derived dynamically from the context of a user's information requirements. The result is a two-dimensional navigation paradigm, which reconciles complete navigational freedom and flexibility with a measure of linear guidance. These specifications are captured in a high-level, platform independent implementation framework.Data; Model; Specifications; Classification; Information; Requirements;

Encapsulation and information hiding as the keys to maintainable and reusable hypermedia applications.

This paper presents a solution to the maintenance problem in hypermedia by applying object-oriented techniques to both the hypermedia data model and the hypermedia system's actual implementation. First, the primary concepts of the 'MESH' (Maintainable, End user friendly, Structured Hypermedia) approach are discussed briefly. These consist of a conceptual data model, a navigation paradigm and an implementation framework. Thereafter, it is shown how the object-oriented concepts of encapsulation and information hiding result in a hypermedia system consisting of self-contained, independently coded nodes. Intra node maintenance is separated entirely from inter node maintenance: the hyperbase's link structure can be updated without affecting node content, whereas an individual node's multimedia content can be reorganized without necessitating updates to links or link anchors.Applications; Information; Data; Model; Structure;

Building hypermedia artifacts by the systematic use of the flexible process model

Most of the current hypermedia model life cycles focus in analysis and design issues, ignoring crucial tasks and activities of hypermedia projects. Others do not take care of basic Software Engineering concepts such as planning, physical and logical modeling, validation and quality assurance, among other issues. In this paper we propose an integrated software process model, called Flexible Process Model, useful in building hypermedia artifacts. This strategy, when instanciated in a specific project, implies a systematic use of model-based constructors, both logical and physical models. The main benefits of this process model are: a) it covers all the principal phases and tasks of a hypermedia project; b) this clear break down can contribute fairly to project planning and can help to establish milestones and metrics; c) it fosters a positive balance by a systematic use of logical and physical modeling; d) it facilitates human communication; e) it promote process improvement and standardization. Therefore, we will discuss and represent, in a medium level of granularity, the phases, tasks and activities, mainly in the dynamic modeling phase. Also we will present some perspectives, stressing the functional, methodological and behavioral perspectives of the three-phased Flexible Process Model. Finally, we will discuss related works and concluding remarks.Eje: Ingeniería de software. Bases de datosRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Effects of hyperlinks on navigation in virtual environments

Hyperlinks introduce discontinuities of movement to 3-D virtual environments (VEs). Nine independent attributes of hyperlinks are defined and their likely effects on navigation in VEs are discussed. Four experiments are described in which participants repeatedly navigated VEs that were either conventional (i.e. obeyed the laws of Euclidean space), or contained hyperlinks. Participants learned spatial knowledge slowly in both types of environment, echoing the findings of previous studies that used conventional VEs. The detrimental effects on participants' spatial knowledge of using hyperlinks for movement were reduced when a time-delay was introduced, but participants still developed less accurate knowledge than they did in the conventional VEs. Visual continuity had a greater influence on participants' rate of learning than continuity of movement, and participants were able to exploit hyperlinks that connected together disparate regions of a VE to reduce travel time

A model-based approach to hypermedia design.

This paper introduces the MESH approach to hypermedia design, which combines established entity-relationship and object-oriented abstractions with proprietary concepts into a formal hypermedia data model. Uniform layout and link typing specifications can be attributed and inherited in a static node typing hierarchy, whereas both nodes and links can be submitted dynamically to multiple complementary classifications. In addition, the data model's support for a context-based navigation paradigm, as well as a platform-independent implementation framework, are briefly discussed.Data; Model; Specifications; Classification;

Modelling data intensive web sites with OntoWeaver

This paper illustrates the OntoWeaver modelling approach, which relies on a set of comprehensive site ontologies to model all aspects of data intensive web sites and thus offers high level support for the design and development of data-intensive web sites. In particular, the OntoWeaver site ontologies comprise two components: a site view ontology and a presentation ontology. The site view ontology provides meta-models to allow for the composition of sophisticated site views, which allow end users to navigate and manipulate the underlying domain databases. The presentation ontology abstracts the look and feel for site views and makes it possible for the visual appearance and layout to be specified at a high level of abstractio