Storyspace & The hyperText Project
The Storyspace Imagemap
Screenshot, desktop with Storyspace open at 'top' level
Clicking on the parts of this image that you want to know about will take
you to a web page where some basic information is provided. Please note that
there are only 4 pages of information, so you will quickly realise that while
the imagemap has lots of 'hotspots' most of them take you to the same place.
(The image is blurred because when I took the screenshot I reduced it, otherwise
it would fill your computer screen and becomes a pain to look at in a graphical
browser.)
The red circle is just to let you know that this is the particular
Storyspace text space that is 'opened' when you click on any of the Storyspace
text spaces contained in this image.
This version of Storyspace (1.3) is for the Macintosh, the program is also
available for Windows but I have no experience in using the program in that
environment. (The publishers maintain a good web
site with this sort of information.)
The window called "Hypertext" is also the name of this particular
document. It appears here because we are open at the 'top' level of the
hypertext. The boxes that are arranged within this window are made of two basic
parts; the text space containing the title (the top part of the box), and the
lower part where in some cases you can see additional 'boxes'. A Storyspace
hypertext can contain any number of these 'boxes' and they can continue 'down'
to 99 levels (that is, like Russian dolls, you can have boxes inside boxes down
to 99 levels).
The top
text part of the box can be opened by
clicking on it. This is a text space, and can contain any combination of text,
graphics, video, and sound. It is in these spaces that you do your writing.
The lower part of any of the boxes simply contain more such spaces. They are
used to organise your hypertext, and I guess can be thought of as a bit like
folders in the Macintosh hierarchical system. If you open the lower part of the
box, you are presented with a
new window and a view of the spaces that
that particular box contains.
Links
can be from any part of the hypertext to any other part, they do
not need to be in the same 'box', and links can be from word to word,
word to sentence, word to paragraph, word to space, word to graphic, word to
movie, word to sound, or pretty much any combination of these. Multiple links (a
source link with more than one destination) are also supported.
The
toolbar
contains most of the basic functions needed to read and write the
hypertext.
Hypertexts written in Storyspace can be distributed as is (requiring
Storyspace to read them), or in three standalone formats. These standalone
formats allow the documents to be more or less web like, and offer varying
degrees of control and access (depending upon your point of view) to the readers
of the document.
There is also a free Storyspace demonstration application available which
allows people to read 'full' Storyspace webs without purchasing the program.
There is no reason why a 'full' web cannot be edited by future readers, and in
some cases this is encouraged, however a copy of the complete program is needed
to be able to do this.
A small pedagogical caveat...
While
Storyspace is one of the major hypertext tools being used, it must be borne in
mind that the
Hypertext Project is an effort to
develop an understanding and awareness of new modes of writing and publication.
All work undertaken within the Project is orientated towards these issues,
rather than specific software products or proprietary solutions. This is why the
Project's long term aim is to test the possibilities of allowing students across
subjects to have multiple methods of presenting work, and for staff to have
multiple modes of assessing work.
| 
