History of Hypermedia
Hypertext | Hypertext Systems | Hypermedia

Authorware, Guide, HyperCard, Toolbook, Asymmetric, Neobook, Delphi, Visual Basic, HTML, Multimedia

Recent advances in technology allow an author to go beyond documents composed of just text and graphics. It is now possible to construct complex documents running on standard computer systems that display not only text and graphics, but animations, audio and video, as well.

Low end, stand alone computers now contain as standard features the technology to display documents containing all these types of files.

The term hypermedia is used to distinguish hyper linked documents composed of text, graphics, animation, audio and video, from hyper linked hyper text documents that contain only text and graphics.

There are a great many commercial systems now available for authoring, distributing and viewing hypermedia documents. A few are listed here. The list is definitely not exhaustive.

Authorware

From Macromedia, Authorware's strength is the construction of complex instructional materials including all types of media display, test administration, response analysis, conditional branching and student tracking.

Authorware is a revolutionary product in terms of its user interface. It is based on a timeline metaphor. A drag and drop feature allows the author to construct a timeline for instructional content. Actions along the timeline are constructed by selecting an icon from the small set that are required and then dragging and dropping the icon onto the timeline. External objects are referred to by simply labeling the elements on the timeline.

Guide

Guide, from InfoAccess, formerly OWL, is based on a frame metaphor. Every document in Guide contains one or more frames.

There four types of buttons within Guide. Note buttons pop-up temporary, non-sticky notes. Expansion buttons expand text and graphics, revealing expansions with supplementary data that are folded away. Reference buttons link objects to other objects, in the same frame, the same document or even other documents. Command buttons execute and run scripts written in Guide's Pascal like scripting language called Logiix. Other executable programs such as spreadsheets can be launched and run through Logiix scripts. Logiix is also used to schedule and execute multimedia clips and elements.

Logiix is a very powerful programming language but can be a little difficult to master for the novice, since there is no tutorial. However, everything in Guide is an object and users can construct highly interactive and interlinked documents using Guide's built in point and click toolbars and menus without any scripting or programming.

Guide comes with both a royalty free Viewer that authors can distribute with their documents, and a Reader that is not royalty free, but allows for annotations, and interacts with a sophisticated wordwheel-driven indexer.

HyperCard

From Apple, HyperCard documents are stacks of cards. Cards contain hot spots that allow the user to jump from card to card. Cards are filled with objects - text, graphics, buttons for animation, and audio and video clips.

HyperCard includes a scripting language called HyperTalk that allows the user to program the actions that a button initiates.

Other and improved versions of HyperCard are available from other vendors. SuperCard is one of them from Allegiant Technologies.

Toolbook

Asymmetric Toolbook, first released in 1991, is based on a page metaphor. Documents are made up of one or more pages. Text, graphics and buttons are placed on the pages.

A scripting language called OpenScript is used to specify how an object behaves, what actions it initiates.

Toolbook comes with a large collection of predefined, prescripted widgets. Widgets are provided for bookmarks, questions, elapsed time indicators, media clips, action buttons, graphical elements, navigation, response analysis, 3D layouts, and a wide variety of other tasks.

A widget's properties are set by the author to determine how an individual widget on a page actually behaves.

Neo Media

Neo Soft in Bend, Oregon has a product called Neo Book that is a low cost, low end multimedia authoring system. Neo Book can be used to construct simple hyper media documents.

If I had to guess, I would say that Neo Book authoring takes place in an environment that generates and compiles Pascal source code. The process is transparent to the author and results in executable, hypertext, hypermedia files.

Neo Book's features are somewhat limited. It is difficult to control the finer aspects of a document's look and feel. Basically, it generates scrollable windows of text with limited objects.

Neo Soft has as companion products an inexpensive paint program, Neo Paint, for creation of graphics; Neo Show, a slide show program for generating executable files that when executed are slide shows; and a nifty menu creation and icon and editing program, Quick Menu. The package is very reasonably priced and the slide show program, Neo Show, is worth looking into.

Programming Languages

While not intended to be used for hypermedia authoring newer versions of visual programming languages such as Borland's Delphi (Visual Pascal) and Microsoft's Visual Basic can be used to create hypermedia documents. Since they are not intended for hypermedia development, they generally will be more cumbersome to use as authoring tools.

In other words, systems like Guide, Authorware, HyperCard and Toolbook, unlike Visual Basic and Pascal, are explicitly object oriented fourth generation programming environments well suited to hypermedia development.

For example to link two objects within Guide, all an author has to do is point to the first object and tell the system to start a link, by clicking on the "start link" icon. Then point to the target object and click on "end link". The system automatically keeps track of all bookkeeping details such as object identifiers, file names in links, etc. To a large extent, the author can concentrate on content, not processes.

HTML

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language and is intended for platform independent distribution of documents. HTML is reminiscent of very early word processors such as WordStar that ran on Kaypro computers. These machines did not even have hard drives and were limited to 64,000 bytes of RAM. Computer real estate in the early 1980s was measured in bytes and kilobytes, not mega or giga bytes. Consequently computer code was very tightly crafted and not a bit of storage was wasted.

HTML was created at CERN, the high energy particle accelerator in Switzerland. Its purpose was to allow scientists to exchange text based research memos, results and papers over the Internet. The Internet was created by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of DOD in the 1960s for research purposes. Recently commercialization has come to the Internet and companies are creating World Wide Web Pages using HTML. Schools are also interested in using the Internet for distance learning.

Without a doubt there is widespread interest in delivering hyper media material over the Internet. Current bandwidth limitations restrict this capability. However it should be noted that hypermedia creation and delivery stretches the limits and the horizons of HTML. To be successful it would seem that HTML will have to metamorphose into something entirely different than its present form.

Miscellaneous

New Media magazine is a source of reliable information on hypermedia products. The 1996 Multimedia Tool Guide issue is particularly informative. Over 30 high end (over $1,000) products and about 40 lower end (under $1,000) products are reviewed.

Corel recently released Click & Create multimedia authoring tool. Some reviewers have noted the lack of documentation and other problems with early versions of this product.

Hyper Case is a visual programming tool from Interactive Image Technologies in North Tonawanda, NY that is suitable for multimedia authoring using a card metaphor.

Microsoft used to sell Microsoft Multimedia Viewer Publishing Toolkit that was used to author Bookshelf, Cinemania and Encarta. It was intended as a content tool or publishing tool for reference works. Microsoft no longer sells or supports this product but copies are still in existence. It would seem not to be in Microsoft's self-interest to sell and support software that could be used to create hypermedia content that might compete with Microsoft's own content titles.

Various help publishing systems for Windows can be used for multimedia authoring. These include Microsoft's own Help Compiler and WinHelp Viewer. It's a little appreciated fact that since Microsoft also sells Macintosh software (Excel, Word, PowerPoint), Help Compiler and WinHelp can be used to author cross platform multimedia documents that run under Windows and under the Mac operating system. Other Windows Help systems include Winhelp 4 for Windows 95 and Forhelp from ForeFront, Inc., Boulder, Colorado.

One unusual, inexpensive and easy to use related product is Q Media from Q Media Software Corp, Vancouver B.C. Canada. Q Media for Windows is used to create timed slide show documents. It is very easy to use.

See PC Magazine, January 10, 1995, PC Tech, Power Programming, "Electronic Publishing with Windows Help", by Ray Duncan, pp 246 - 249. A related article by Barry Simon appeared in the same magazine, February 21, 1995, pp 233 - 238.