This paper presents the principles of ontology-supported and ontology-driven conceptual navigation. Conceptual navigation realizes the independence between resources and links to facilitate interoperability and reusability. An engine builds dynamic links, assembles resources under an argumentative scheme and allows optimization with a possible constraint, such as the user’s available time. Among several strategies, two are discussed in detail with examples of applications. On the one hand, conceptual specifications for linking and assembling are embedded in the resource meta-description with the support of the ontology of the domain to facilitate meta-communication. Resources are like agents looking for conceptual acquaintances with intention. On the other hand, the domain ontology and an argumentative ontology drive the linking and assembling strategies. KEYWORDS : Adaptive hypertext, conceptual navigation, metadata, XML, ontology, narration, time optimization, WWW.