Medienästhetik der Schrift

11.2.6 Guide (Peter Brown 1986)

Guide was developed at the University of Kent on a UNIX system. In 1986 it was released as a commercial product by OWL (Office Workstation Ltd.) first for Macintosh and later for the IBM PC. Thus, it was the first hypertext system available on both systems. It is also a window-based system.

An interesting aspect of Guide is that it supports three different kinds of hypertext links:

• inline replacements : provides a hierarchical structure like in a book. A replacement link expands the text to a larger text (i.e., from a title of a section to the section itself).
• pop-ups: opens a little window with a short explanatory text. The window disappears as soon as the mouse button is released. Hence, you cannot copy or save the displayed text.
• references: jumps to another location in the hypertext.

To differentiate between the three link types, the shape of the cursor changed depending on the type of link; an asterix for a pop-up link, an arrow for a reference link, a circled cross to open an inline replacement, and a square to close an inline replacement.

Quelle: Institut für Informationssysteme und Computer Medien.