HyperInternet® - creating buttons with the NetPage NBA and "realtime" Internet links

Creating buttons that connect to Internet Universal Resource Locators via Browsers

Since much of the new material found on the Internet today is contained on World Wide Web Sites, it makes sense that students and staff would like to utilize WWW resources as part of their multimedia writing. One solution might be to use a Web browser such as Netscape or MacWeb as the presentation tool and "jump" from site to site using the Web's hypertext interface. Unfortunately, that doesn't allow for the degree of interactivity we've become accustomed to since not all Web sites referenced in a report on a topic would necessarily have links to the other Web sites used for the report, nor would most people like to present from a hotlist or bookmark list that contains dozens of entries. Ideally, the presentation tool used by staff and students should allow for local, "static" types of information such as text, graphics, sound, animation, videodisc and CD-ROM, but also allow transparent access to Web sites as part of the local presentation. Although a number of companies purport to allow this (such as Adobe's Acrobat which requires the Exchange module to be an authoring system or the much-hyped partnership between Netscape and Director to allow the playing of Director objects from within Netscape or other portable document formats (PDF) such as Common Ground), only one software package enables the process to occur in a standard fashion in a reasonably priced, intuitive and easy to use environment - HyperStudio® from Roger Wagner Publishing!

HyperStudio's most elegant answer to this are New Button Actions (NBA) called NetPage (Macintosh) or NetPage (Windows) and MacWebPage (click on either to download the NBA for your use). These button actions allow you to enter a URL (Universal Resource Locator - the addressing scheme of the Internet) directly or copy and paste from your Internet "address list". After creating this button action, any time this button is activated in your stack, the connection will "pass" this URL to the application (via an AppleEvent), which will in turn display the requested Web page. At this point, you can continue to "browse" the World Wide Web using Netscape or MacWeb or use the application menu (or a click to the side of the browser screen) and you'll be returned to your HyperStudio stack and local presentation mode. In this manner, staff and students can share local resources and Internet resources in the same presentation software. The only requirements to using these NBAs are that you have the Netscape or MacWeb browser on your hard drive and that you have an active TCP Internet connection.

This process is so intuitive, that in less than an hour, most students and staff will feel comfortable with adding this "HyperInternet" link to their reports and presentations. To help you with sharing this concept, feel free to download this three page HyperInternet handout (32K) that takes you step-by-step through the process of searching the Internet for resources, preparing a local report, and then adding links to Internet resources. For even more help, download this three page HyperInternet Tip handout (360K) which gives easy to read screen shots for assistance. Both handouts are in ClarisWorks format. Finally, you can even download the sample files (540K) I use to help participants get started. They cover five topic areas and fit easily on a disk and allow room for folks to save their reports on the same disk. At this time these files are only available in Macintosh format.

A second method to access Web pages through HyperStudio is to make a button action in your presentation which connects to a MacWeb Hotlist file, a Netscape Bookmark file, the Netscape application or the MacWeb application.

Keep in mind that even though I've been "referencing" Web pages, since these browsers support multiple protocols such as Gopher, FTP, News and Mail, this method effectively allows HyperStudio to access virtually every resource available on the Internet as part of a multimedia writing project.

Effective use of either of these methods of accessing the Internet through HyperStudio would involve staff and students in researching their sites beforehand and saving the URLs in a word processor document (SimpleText works fine) for copy and paste in the NetPage or MacWebPage dialog box.


Creating "real time" HyperStudio access through your Web browser

Yet another method of "delivering" HyperStudio stacks over the Internet is to configure your Web browser to support the launching of HyperStudio when it encounters stacks as part of a URL. This is a very straightfoward process that makes using Web pages and HyperStudio an exciting combination.

Just released from Roger Wagner Publishing is an even easier and more effective method of including HyperStudio stacks in Web pages - there is now a HyperStudio "plug-in" available! With this plug-in and the ability to use "frames" on Web pages, you can now combine all of the features of HyperStudio stacks along with standard HTML coding - all on the same page without launching HyperStudio separately! This is the tool that will enable K-12 staff and students to create "Java" type effects without any programming! For more information, check out the HyperPlugged Page!


Since the whole point of having access to the Internet for staff and students is to increase the amount and the timeliness of accessible information, it only makes sense to encourage them to use those resources directly in their reports and presentations without making them part of the "static" information "burned in" on the multimedia writing. The methods demonstrated today should give you a start on helping those staff and students to create their first "Intermedia" presentation and joining the realm of HyperInternet® - creating TRULY interactive reports!

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