HyperBook

A hyperbook is a collection of somehow related and usually interlinked hypertext pages in which each page has a unique identifier, which is often a page title. Some examples of hyperbooks are:

Given the ubiquity of hyperbooks, it is surprising that there seems to be no commonly used term for this concept so far.

Each of the hyperbook types mentioned above has its own conventions for establishing links between its pages, and none of them provides a bridge to other hyperbooks that would allow seamless browsing. This is what the HyperBook framework provides: conventions for linking between different hyperbooks, and a browser that makes navigation across diverse hyperbooks straighforward.

The conventions are very simple:

  1. Each hyperbook has a unique identifier.
  2. Each hyperbook page has an identifier that is unique inside the hyperbook.

Integration of a hyperbook type with the HyperBook browser requires a bit of code to be written. Click here to learn more about this.

Many kinds of data can be represented as hyperbooks, even though they are not really collections of related and interlinked pages. This can be useful to allow linking to data items from hyperbooks. Click here to learn more about these "special" hyperbooks.