Ariadne: A Java-based Guided Tour System for the World Wide Web

This paper presents a Guided tour system for the WWW, called Ariadne, which implements the ideas of trails and guided tours, originating from the hypertext field. Ariadne appears as a Java applet to the user and it stores guided tours in a database format separated from the WWW documents included in the tour. The main advantages of the system compared to similar systems are: (1) an independent user interface which does not affect the layout of the documents being part of the tour, (2) branching tours where the user may follow alternative routes, (3) composition of existing tours into aggregate tours, (4) overview map with indication of which parts of a tour have been visited and support for getting back on track. Ariadne is available as a research prototype, and it has been tested among a group of university students as well as casual users on the Internet. Keywords Guided tours; Navigation; Hypermedia; Presentation

• Type: Journal
• Year: 1998
• Where: CN
• Authors: Jesper Jühne, Anders T. Jensen, Kaj Grønbæk
• Keywords: Ariadne, CN 1998, Guided Tours, Tours