Navigation in Hypertext

Hypertext Analysis

The efforts to solve the navigation problem in hypertext involve 3 areas: user-interface analysis, textual analysis and structural analysis.

Some of the techniques used to improve user interface are maps and guided tours. But these techniques seem to be ineffective and difficult to be maintained when the hypertext systems become larger.

Textual analysis uses statistically analyzing word frequencies in each article and index articles by significant terms. Readers can use those terms to facilitate retrieval and navigation among relevant documents [Botafogo]. Although this analysis can be used for large collection of documents, textual analysis doesn't help users obtain the structure and the relationship of documents in a hypertext system, which is an important part of hypertext and contributes mostly to users' lost-in-hypertext problem. Therefore, structural analysis is necessary to provide the structural architecture of a hypertext system.

User-interface analysis, textual analysis and structural analysis must be used concurrently to overcome the navigation in hypertext problem.

Last modified: 6 Nov 2002 by Kathy Nguyen Dang