Webvise: browser and proxy support for open hypermedia structuring mechanisms on the World Wide Web

This paper discusses how to augment the World Wide Web with an open hyperme dia service (Webvise) that provides structures such as contexts, links, ann otations, and guided tours stored in hypermedia databases external to the W eb pages. This includes the ability for users collaboratively to create lin ks from parts of HTML Web pages they do not own and support for creating li nks to parts of Web pages without writing HTML target tags. The method for locating parts of Web pages can locate parts of sages across frame hierarch ies and it also supports certain repairs of links that break due to modifie d Web pages. Support for providing links to/from parts of non-HTML data, su ch as sound and movie, will be possible via interfaces to plug-ins and Java -based media players. The hypermedia structures are stored in a hypermedia database, developed fr om the Devise Hypermedia framework, and the service is available on the Web via an ordinary URL. The best user interface for creating and manipulating the structures is currently provided for the Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 .x browser through COM integration that utilizes the Explorer's DOM represe ntation of Web-pages. But the structures can also be manipulated and used v ia special Java applets and a purl proxy server solution is provided for us ers who only need to browse the structures. A user can create and use the e xternal structures as 'transparency' layers on top of arbitrary Web pages, the user can switch between viewing pages with one or more layers (contexts ) of structures or without any external structures imposed on them. (C) 199 9 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.