Rationale

This chapter discusses the application of object-oriented technology to the area of hypermedia systems. It provides some background to hypertext and hypermedia systems, and presents a hypermedia model based on the Dexter hypertext reference model. Further, a multi-paradigm object-oriented toolkit for hypermedia systems is sketched and, concluding this chapter, we reflect on the contribution of object technology to the development of heterogeneous systems.

Hints

Hypermedia technology is rapidly becoming important, both in education and business applications. Hypermedia systems mean a challenge due to the inherent heterogeneity of their underlying model. You may wish to obtain the Mosaic browser to explore the Internet cyberspace from {\tt ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu:/Mosaic}. See appendix internet.

Further reading

As further reading, I recommend  [Conklin87] and  [Wood90]. For a study of hypermedia models, consult  [Halasz94] and  [Hardman94]. Another interesting paper in this respect is  [Nierstrasz]. As a source of information on multimedia, I recommend  [Burger93].

Project assignments

As subjects for a paper you may think of As a practical assignment, I suggest

Comments

Research and development issues for hypermedia systems cover a wide area, ranging from system implementation issues and scheduling policies to authoring issues and conceptual user modeling. Our perspective primarily concerns architectural issues and the application of object technology to system development.