New review of hypermedia and multimedia

Abstract

The 1987 ACM Hypertext conference was seen by many as the catalyst for a significant period of growth in hypertext (and subsequently hypermedia) as a coherent research area and in its impact on the general public. The period since 1987 has been punctuated by many significant events, including the development and free distribution of HyperCard, the establishing of the ACM Hypertext conference series, the founding of SIGLINK/SIGWEB, the rapid growth in the market for CD-ROM based multimedia applications, the widespread adoption of the WWW leading to the first truly large-scale hypertext application and the popularisation and commercialisation of hypertext concepts, and the emergence of web2.0. Early among those events was the launch in 1989 by Taylor Graham Publishing of the first specialist journal Hypermedia.