Hyperlinks aide navigation<\/p>\n
By Zatni Arbi<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): Up until two decades ago, when people still used
\na Royal or Olympia typewriter to produce stories, manuscripts and
\nnovels, we had to work mostly in a linear manner. We would start
\nat the beginning and work our way to the end.<\/p>\n
Life was made a little bit easier when photocopy machines were
\nintroduced. Each time some text had to be inserted into what we
\nhad laboriously typed in, scissors and glue proved to be
\nindispensable tools. We applied the concept of \"cut and paste\" in
\nthe real sense.<\/p>\n
However, since PCs and Macs replaced the typewriter, a lot of
\nthings have changed. We no longer have to follow such a strictly
\nlinear process in writing. We can now simply jump from one part
\nof our writing to another and add, delete or change words as we
\nwish.<\/p>\n
And the Web intensifies our habit of jumping around. Open a
\nWeb page, read the text, and when you see a link, which is
\nnormally in underlined blue characters, you can click on it and
\njump to another part of the page where you can read more detailed
\ninformation or supporting data. The link can also take you to a
\ndifferent Web page, call up your default e-mail client software
\nand prepare an e-mail to the address that it contains, or even
\nload a multimedia file and play it for you.<\/p>\n
I remember back in late 1980s when hyperlink capability was a
\ntruly stunning technological breakthrough among us graduate
\nstudents at the Communication and Information Program of the
\nUniversity of Hawaii. Today, it is taken for granted. Even a
\nsimple document created in Microsoft Word can be sprinkled with
\nhyperlinks to make it much easier for the reader to read it
\nnonsequentially from one part to another, or for the writer to
\nrevise different parts of his writing as he finds new data.<\/p>\n
Navigation Tools<\/p>\n
The hyperlink is definitely not the only tool that we can use
\nto make navigating in a long document easy. If you organize your
\ndocument with headings and subheadings, you can call up Document
\nMap and use it to move from one section to another. In Word,
\nclick on the View menu, and then on Document Map. Or, if you used
\nthe Outline view mode when you started writing, you can also use
\nit to move around easily.<\/p>\n
However, as you may have become accustomed to moving around in
\nWeb pages using hyperlinks or if you regularly work on documents
\nto be posted on the Web, you might as well learn to incorporate
\nthis easy-to-use navigation tool in your document.<\/p>\n
When writing this article, I happened to be preparing a rather
\nlong article with a lot of headings and subheadings for the
\nintroductory chapter to my team's report of our research on e-
\ncommerce in ASEAN. We can use it as an example to show how
\nhyperlinks can be created.<\/p>\n
First of all, I made the report outline in the ordinary way
\ninstead of using the Outline mode available in Word. I typed in
\nthe title of the chapter and then added the first level of
\nsubheadings. As I thought of the issues in each section that
\nwould require their own subheadings, I added them to my outline.
\nOnce the outline looked complete enough and the sequence of
\nissues made sense to me, I copied it and pasted at the end of the
\ndocument. I left the original outline on top as the map for the
\nentire chapter, and its copy below as the skeleton to which I
\ncould add the flesh.<\/p>\n
Add Bookmarks First<\/p>\n
To be able to immediately jump from the outline -- or the map
\n-- to a subheading, we have to \"bookmark\" the destination first.
\nThis is a straightforward task. Just scroll down to the target
\nsubheading, highlight the entire name, and then click on Insert,
\nBookmark. We then get the Bookmark dialog box, as shown in the
\naccompanying picture. We can add, delete or go to any bookmark in
\nthe document with the help of this dialog box. To add a bookmark,
\nwe also have to give it a name. You can give a name consisting of
\nseveral words, but you cannot use a space, a quotation mark or
\nany other writing mechanics in the name. You can separate the
\nwords using underscore marks, though. So, for example, I named
\none of my bookmarks \"Displacement_of_Workers\", and it marks the
\nsubheading \"Displacement of Workers\". Before you close the dialog
\nbox, select Location so that the bookmarks will be sorted
\naccording to their locations in the document.<\/p>\n
Once all the subheadings in the body of the document are
\nbookmarked, we can proceed and create the hyperlinks. We go back
\nto the top by simply pressing Ctrl-Home. To change a subheading
\nin the outline into a hyperlink, what we need to do is select the
\nentire text and press Ctrl-K. This key combination calls up the
\nHyperlink dialog box, which you can also see in the picture.
\nClick on the Places in this document icon on the left tool bar,
\nand then click on Bookmarks in the center box so that you can see
\na list of all bookmarks that you have added to the document.
\nClick on the one that you want the hyperlink to jump to, and then
\nclick OK.<\/p>\n
So, for example, if I changed my outline subheading \"E-mail, a
\nKiller Application\" into a hyperlink to the same subheading in
\nthe body of my document, each time I click on it I will jump to
\nthe subheading of my section that explains why e-mail was the
\napplication that gave people a truly compelling reason to want to
\nbe able to use the Internet.<\/p>\n
There are a couple of other things that you can do with a
\nhyperlink. You can create one that will open a Word document or
\nan HTML file stored in your computer, in a Website, etc. Press
\nCtrl-K again, and now click on the Existing File or Web Page
\nicon, then on the Recent Files icon next to it, and you will get
\na list of the files that you have used recently. You can even use
\nthe Browse facility to find a file or a Web page that is not
\nlisted there.<\/p>\n
Just for fun, try to find an audio file from your
\nC:WINDOWSMEDIA folder, and create a hyperlink for this file.
\nClick on it and see what happens. Remember that it is also not
\nnecessary for you to have the text before you can create a
\nhyperlink. Place the cursor on a blank line, and then press Ctrl-
\nK again. After you have specified where you want the hyperlink to
\ntake you, go to the Text to display box on top of the dialog box
\nand type in the name for the hyperlink there. You can even
\nspecify what the Tip box will show when the mouse cursor is
\nplaced on the hyperlink.<\/p>\n
Bookmarks and hyperlinks are really worth spending some time
\nexploring. (zatni@cbn.net.id)<\/p>",
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