Unexpected Delight

The key to planning a hypertext garden is to communicate the promise of unexpected delight while assuring the reader that she is not entering an unplanned wilderness.

A rigid design might provide identical thumb tabs on each page leading to the hypertext's entrances; a more fluid design might always offer both some consistent choices and some choices unique to each writing space. Where a rigid design places separate, stand-alone items within a navigational shell, an organic design might interweave relevant sections, enhancing an old section by providing a new path to new material or showing how a new contribution illuminates or responds to another page. This fluidity helps break monolithic articles and white papers into smaller, more natural units, pieces of writing that can be reread and relinked in new and unexpected contexts.

Gates and Signposts Statuary and Follies