Operation Manual

Working with Hyperlinks and Interactivity 67
Hypergraphics
Hypergraphics in WebPlus come in two flavors: graphic objects to
which a hyperlink has been attached (using Insert/Hyperlink...)and
those with one or more hotspots superimposed using the Hotspot tool.
The choice is usually obvious. If you’re creating a button bar using
separate shapes for buttons, use individual links for each graphic (or
rollovers, discussed above). If your bar consists of a single graphic, use
hotspots.
Hotspots, which are themselves graphic elements, are not
recommended for use over text blocks. They force the text to be
converted to a graphic when the page is published, which aliases and
often distorts the characters. On the other hand, hotspots over a picture
don’t trigger conversion. So if you want clean lettering as part of your
hypergraphic, create it in your paint program. (In general, use the .GIF
format for all non-photographic images you create for WebPlus Web
publications, and work in 256-color mode. See the tips in the
“Graphics” chapter.)
The five-dot browse sequence bar depicted above is a good example of
a simple, useful hypergraphic. The hotspots themselves comprise a
group that can be copied and pasted to various pages, while the
underlying graphic changes.
Hypergraphics give you an alternative to using hyperlinked text, which
is best reserved for use within body text. For example, if you had a set
of pages arranged alphabetically, you might like to create an alphabet
users could click on to jump to a particular page. This could be done
with a string of 26 hyperlinked text characters, but a creative alphabet
graphic with hotspots over each letter would undoubtedly end up
looking better.
You can use hypergraphics to create fanciful pictorial menus, visual
indexes, maps, diagrams, and other clickable previews of the content on
your site. In short, they’re fun. Use them!