HyperDocuments are designed to augment your reading with additional information.  The information is presented in popup windows which allow the reader to obtain additional information about the content of the document without leaving the current HTML page.  The windows may contain footnotes, sidebars, bibliographic information, glossary definitions, internal links, or "sticky notes" which mimic those little yellow stickers.

HyperDocuments pop up new windows when you click text anchors colored gray or black rather than blue. You can tell what kind of information is offered by reading the status line at the bottom of the screen. Internal hypertext links to other parts of the HyperDocument are either clickable icons or standard blue text. Hypertext links to other documents are rare, since the "sidebar" will bring up the referenced page in a new window.

If there is a reference section (bibliography) and/or a Notes section at the end of the HyperDocument, there will be reverse links from the citation or note to the place(s) where they originate in the text. Those of you who read the bibliography first can really benefit from these links.

Types of text anchors:

Sidebars

Sidebars are text pages larger than typical notes, often large web pages. Sidebars are anchored by gray text underlined, for instance: HTML markup for simple tasks, such as making paragraph bereaks and emphasizing some text, is a minor skill easily mastered in a tutorial offered free of charge from the Maricopa Center for Learning and Instruction. Try it.

Footnotes

Footnotes are classic marginalia. They are additional points of information somewhat more important than references. Footnotes are anchored by underlined gray numerals in the text, for instance: Notes may take the form of footnotes, endnotes or sidenotes 1 .

Citations

Citations are bibliographic references. They are underlined gray text in parentheses. Clicking a citation pops up a full bibliographic reference in a new window. In that window is a button "Go to Catalog," clicking on that button takes you to the "Catalog Card," another window with the full bibliographic information, an abstract (if available), annotations about the work from your collaborators, and buttons which allow you to contribute your annotation or read the full text of the work (if on the WWW). Here is an example: The recent expansion of the Internet's capabilities in both communication capacity and diversity in genre categories (Agre 1995) has fueled an explosion in collaborative capabilities.

Glosses

Glosses are definitions, or technical comments on a word, from an enterprise glossary. The anchors are words or phrases in italic gray text. Clicking an italic gray word or phrase pops up a "definition card" that contains the definition, any commentary on the definition, and buttons which allow you to contribute your comments on the definition. Here is an example: A research web essay eventually evolves into a canonical document.

Notes

Sticky notes are a general purpose note used for whatever purpose the author chooses. Notes are anchored by bold gray text. Typical uses are for note bene that do not warrant footnotes, glosses in documents that are not supported by an Annotated HyperGlossary, or bibliographic information in documents not supported by an Annotated HyperBibliography. They can be used to pop up images if you write the proper HTML in the note. Here is an example: Information on this service has been hard to come by.

Handy Hints

• Windows are resizable and may be moved.
• To hide new windows you can just click any open space on the main window or you can X them out.
• Each of the features opens just one window. That means, for instance, all sidebars share the same window, opening a new sidebar replaces the old one. This means that you will not be buried in windows, you will have at most six. Note too, that since there is only one window for sidebars, if you open another sidebar within a sidebar, the original sidebar is replaced. There is one exception: sidebars can be made "persistent" if the author chooses. DocReviews of the HyperDocument are usually made persistent so you can have both the HyperDocument and its DocReview on the screen at the same time.
• If there is a sidebar that allows you to annotate the document using DocReview, move the sidebar to the left side of the screen and the main window to the right. Make each of them narrow enough so they share the screen. You can then read the document in one window and annotate it in another.
• If you move a window, it will stay where you put it if you don't X it out. Thus if you move the footnote window to the bottom of the screen the footnotes will always be displayed at the bottom of the screen.

Agre, Phil. 1998. Designing genres for new media: Social, economic and political contexts. In CyberSociety 2.0: Revisiting CMC and Community. Editor Steve Jones. Sage.  

Canonical document -- An authoritative document. In the context of Research Webs, the canonical document is an essay that incorporates or references the accumulated knowledge about a topic as interpreted or synthesized by the research team. --- (C. Hendricksen)

1. Classic footnotes are placed at the bottom of each page and numbered from (1) on each page. They cannot be employed in hypertextual documents because hypertext documents have no pages! End notes are placed at the end of the document and are numbered consecutively. HyperDocument footnotes share some characteristics of the classic endnotes since there is a summary of the notes at the end of the document for the convenience of the reader that chooses to print the document for reading offline. Sidenotes are placed in the margins of the paper document. They were extensively used in theological manuscripts. HyperDocument footnotes resemble sidenotes since they pop up in a new window which can be moved to the side of the main HyperDocument window.