Hypertext is a text on a computer that leads us to other text. Hypertext is quite an inovation, which helps to end up some of the limitations of written text. Hypertext doesn’t remain static; it uses hyperlinks to organize information in a more dynamic way. Hypertext has many tasks, like making a bubble appear when someone clicks or hovers over it, or making a clip run or an aplication open.
However, hypertext documents can be static or dynamic; prepared or changing. Static hypertext can be used to cross-reference data in many different documents. Menus and command lines can also be developed by a complexly organized system, like systems of linking and cross-referencing, being the most notorious use of it the Word Wide Web.
Ted Nelson invented the words that would be used as many after him, hypertext and hypermedia, in 1965 and worked with Andries Van Dam to develop the Hypertext Editing System in 1968. In December of that year The Mother of All Demos was born, when Engelbart showed a hypertext interface to the public for the first time.
Berners-Lee invented, in the late 1980s, the WWW to make scientists able to share their works all over the world. In 90s an early Internet web browser called Lynx was invented, which began the creation of the web on the Internet with Its ability to provide hypertext links.
Some years later, in 1995, Ward Cunningham created the first wiki, hypertextualizing the web even more by making editing easier, and adding backlinks and limited source tracking. Wiki developers keep on exploring hypertext and its posibilities not included in the original web.
Source:
- Hypertext article from Wikipedia.
