HYPERMEDIA AND THE WEB - AN ENGINEERING APPROACH

Hypermedia & the Web An Engineering Approach David Lowe, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia Wendy Hall, University of Southampton, UK The rich online world offered through the Web is marred by the chaos which underlies it. At the very early stages of understanding how to harness the power of this new medium, electronic document creators, managers and researchers often spend time on technology innovations at the expense of adopting the sound engineering principles which have paid such dividends in the software industry. Hypermedio & the Web approaches interactive information (concentrating on hypertext documents) as a structure requiring management, quantification and documentation. From analysing the purpose for which a website, CD-ROM or online archive is created, assessing the characteristics and resources needed for the process of building each one, to the assessment of the end product itself, this book attempts to carve out features that are essential to the successful structuring of information in an electronic environment. This is an ambitious book charting an emerging discipline. It is an essential tool to help developers and educators shape and maintain useful and relevant electronic information. 'Hypermedia Engineering hasn't produced many tangible benefits in real-life situations, because very few people practise it. That's why the book is needed.' David Barron, Southampton University 'This book is interesting and excellently fulfills a current need [by] providing an exhaustive and up-to-date vision of the hypermedia field.' Fabio Vitali, University of Bologna 'The strength of this book is its breadth - it covers many of the issues in hypermedia with examples fromthe technical to the managerial. Students could use these as starting points when designing or evaluating hypermedia systems.