DEFINITION OF HYPERTEXT AND HYPERMEDIA.

• Hypertext - Hypertext is basically the same as regular text - it can be stored, read, searched, or edited - with an important exception: hypertext is text with pointers to other text. The browsers let you deal with the pointers in a transparent way -- select the pointer, and you are presented with the text that is pointed to.
• Hypermedia - Hypermedia is a superset of hypertext. Hypermedia documents contain links not only to other pieces of text, but also to other forms of media - sounds, images, and movies. Images themselves can be selected to link to sounds or documents. This means that browsers might not display a text file, but might display images or sound or animations. Hypermedia simply combines hypertext and multimedia.

Some examples of Hypermedia might be:

• You are reading a text on the Japanese language. You select a Japanese phrase, then hear the phrase as spoken in the native tongue.
• You are viewing a company's floor plan, you select an office by clicking on a room. The employee's name and picture appears with a list of their current projects.
• You are a law student studying the California Revised Statutes. By selecting a passage, you find precedents from a 1920 Supreme Court ruling stored at Cornell. Cross-referenced hyperlinks allow you to view any one of 500 related cases with audio annotations.