Hypermediasystems October 15, 2023 by Marcos Benevides

:ID: 10d70300-3c11-48f7-af3b-d5d07d5a5f39

Chapter 01 - Hypermedia: A Reintroduction

What Is Hypermedia?

Hypermedia is a media, for example a text, that includes non-linear branching from one location in the media to another, via, for example, hyperlinks embedded in the media.

A Brief History of Hypermedia

Where did the idea of hypermedia come from?

• The 1945 article As We May Think, from Vanevar Bush
• Ted Nelson’s work on the “Hypertext Editing System” at Brown University and who later created the File Retrieval and Editing System (FRESS)
• Douglas Engelbart’s thesis on the “The Mother Of All Demos”

Modern Implementation

• Tim Berners-Lee’s “World Wide Web”
• Roy Fielding’s “Architectural Styles And The Design Of Network Based Software Architectures”

The World’s Most Successful Hypertext: HTML

The Essence of HTML as a Hypermedia

• Anchor tags

  <a href="https://hypermedia.systems/">
    Hypermedia Systems
  </a>
  

  An anchor tag consists of the tag itself, <a></a>, as well as the attributes and content within the tag. Of particular interest is the href attribute, which specifies a hypertext reference to another document or document fragment. It is this attribute that makes the anchor tag a hypermedia control.

• Form tags

  <form action="/signup" method="post">
    <input type="text" name="email" placeholder="Enter Email To Sign Up..."/>
    <button>Sign Up</button>
  </form>
  

  This mechanism allows the user to issue requests to update the state of resources on the server. Note that despite this new type of request the communication between client and server is still done entirely with hypermedia.

  It is the form tag that makes Hypermedia-Driven Applications possible.