Java hypermedia: on and beyond the world wide web

The world wide web (WWW) has made hypermedia applications widespread. Originally, the WWW was used only for ‘freestyle’, unrestricted browsing and its foundation technologies reflect this. Now, developers are working on more advanced hypermedia for new application domains. Improvements in graphical user interfaces, adaptive guidance and integrated navigation support are the main objectives. In this paper, we present Java as a mature implementation language for advanced Internet hypermedia. A minimalistic Java approach (MJA) towards development is introduced. MJA integrates Java with existing object-oriented hypermedia design methodologies. MJA is illustrated with HyperMap, a browser application for spatial hypermedia.