1. Hartmut Obendorf, Harald Weinreich Faculty for Informatics, University of Hamburg The Look of the Link Concepts for the visualization of extended hyperlinks

2. Overview Motivation Create a vision  Locate problems  Sketch solutions Conclusion  Systematic UI development  Need for UI guidelines

3. Motivation for Our Work  Implications for the user interface?  UI aspects were hardly considered  Advanced Hypertext features intrude into the Web

4. Motivation for Our Work Current Link Interface  Cannot support some of the new features  Is an accidental de facto standard with serious drawbacks, e.g.: –underlined text has reduced readability, –overlapping link markers are not possible, –no standard for links in graphics exists.

5. Vision Systematically develop the user interface of the Web browsers of tomorrow  Learn from former systems  Consider user interface research  Create prototypes and do usability tests

6. Vision Departure Destination Arrival Destination Based on Landow‘s “Rhetoric of Hypertext“

7. Departure Where are the links?  Locate and  Select extended hyperlinks.

8. Links from different providers Link- base A Link- base B

9. Link Overload It is known that underlining significantly reduces the readability of text. This is caused by the interference of the underline with descenders, letters like g, f and y. Furthermore, underlining emphasizes text exceedingly. Hypertext stimulates an rather extensive way of reading. Readers often just scan the text for links. This is maybe a symptom of an era in which time seems to be the most valuable good.

10. Overlapping Markers

11. Mockup: Departure

12. Destination Where shall I go?  Information about destination  Selection of destination

13. Typed Links Semantic link types give a better idea of the target Types can also control the behavior Types are only helpful if displayed or processed XLink  Human readable and computable types  Links, arcs and resources are typed A B

14. Typed Links B A

15. Alternative Targets

16. Mockup: Destination

17. Arrival Welcome! Where am I ?  Identify target  Understand context

18. Target Anchors

19. Co-References

20. Mockup: Arrival

21. Conclusion XLink opens many questions – many answers yet to be found Further research and evaluations of hyperlink user interfaces required Don‘t make same mistake again! New developments have to be accompanied by UI considerations