Home / inlinelink
[ English | Japanese ]

inlineLink: Yet Another Anchor Method

Introduction

Browsing web pages is becoming very popular activity in these days. There are some instructional webpages which provide readers to acquire brand-new knowledge.
Conventional web pages are designed for browsing as each dependency page. When the reader clicks the anchor, the current document disappears in order to show the linked document. It is not effective because the reader loses the context while reading the original document. Even if the reader specifies to show the linked document on new window, the reader may have to re-arrange the location of the new window. It seems to me that the reader will not be able to keep concentration on reading and understanding about the contents.
We propose a new method to follow anchor, inlineLink, which allows readers to insert the linked document near the link. The nested document will help the readers to keep their position on reading.

Concept Image of inlineLink (and Video)

inlineLink concept

mpeg1 video(25.2MB)

Example of inlineLink applied document

sample document
(Notice) Netscape Navigator won't work well. Please browse with Internet Explorer.
Press "?" or "h" for help.
Applying these structured pages are effective.

download of inlineScript and sample documents (Ver0.7 : Jul 22, 2002)
sample document included in above archive(in Japanese)

On-Demand conversion with inlineServlet

Please input url in the form of the inlineServlet page (sorry, not working) and press "OK". The anchors of specified page are replaced as 'inlineLink'. (due to the firewall of University of Tsukuba, this system is not available currently. Please download the following inlineServlet.)

You can download the inlineServlet version 0.6 [war | tar.gz | lzh].
(Work with Servlet container such as Jakarta TOMCAT,
war format is easier than others. see How to install war file)

inlineLink Bookmarklet

To tell the truth, inlineLink method is not effective for all web documents (especially for complex, well-layouted pages). Therefore we built an "inlineLink bookmarklet" for instant use. The inlineLink bookmarklet enables the user to easily apply inlineLink functions to the current opening web document. Pressing the bookmarklet button on the links toolbar of IE attaches/detatches inlineLink functions to the current page.

Download of inlineLink Bookmarklet (lzh | zip)

Instruction: Put the extracted files in C:\ root folder. Drag the inlineLink_bookmarklet.url file and drop it to links toolbar of IE. You may see a security alert such as "You are adding a link that may not be safe. Do you want to continue?". Plz press "Yes" to proceed. After that, you can attach/detatch inlineLink by pressing the button.

The zooming function of inlineLink will be useful.

(Special Thanks to Mr. Daisuke Sato: He introduced a bookmarklet concept and developed first prototype of inlineLink bookmarklet.)

Paper

  1. Motoki Miura, Buntarou Shizuki, Jiro Tanaka: inlineLink: Realization of Inline Expansion Link Methods on a Conventional Web Browser, Proceedings of 6th Asia-Pacific Conference on Computer-Human Interaction (APCHI2004, LNCS 3101), pp. 272-282, June 2004. (pdf)
  2. Hironobu Aoki, Motoki Miura, Jiro Tanaka: A Web Site Editing System based on Unfold/Fold Operations, Proceedings of International Conference on Internet Computing (IC2002), Vol. II, pp. 297-302, June 2002. (pdf)
  3. Motoki Miura, Jiro Tanaka: inlineLink: Inline Expansion Link Methods in Hypertext Browsing, Proceedings of International Conference on Internet Computing (IC2001), Vol. II, pp. 653-659, June 2001. (pdf)