Fat link

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A fat link (also known as a "one-to-many" link, an "extended link"[1]) or a "multi-tailed link" [2] is a hyperlink which leads to multiple endpoints; the link is a multivalued function.

The hyperlinks that are attached to the same design object can be grouped into a fat link for representational purposes, and the activation of a fat link gives a menu of the links contained in it (cf. hyperlink history list), from which individual links can then be activated.[3]

The concept is also covered in Grønbæk and Trigg's extended Dexter model,[4] which cites the Instructional Design Environment.[5]

The concept pre-dates the World Wide Web.[6] However, there have been calls for fat links to be implemented on the web (e.g. Jakob Nielsen in his Alertbox for January 3, 2005 [7]).

The idea was implemented in 2007 by two services: first AFewURLs,[8][9] then FatURL.[10]

In 2011, Brief.ly[11] launched a service allowing to have multiple links in tabs. It followed by Links2.Me and Many.at as well as Feed2Tabs and Links2Tabs plugins for WordPress. In 2012, Briefly.PRO version of the platform allowed anyone to run similar services on their own domain names.

References

  1. "XML Linking Language (XLink) Version 1.0" accessed 2010-1-27 http://www.w3.org/TR/xlink/#extended-link
  2. "HTML, Web Browsers, and Other Paraphernalia" accessed 2011-08-15 http://www.duke.edu/~mshumate/fiction/htt/tools.html
  3. Harri Oinas-Kukkonen, "Embedding Hypermedia into Information Systems," hicss, p. 187, 30th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) Volume 6: Digital Documents, 1997.
  4. Grønbæk, K. and Trigg, R. H. 1996. Toward a Dexter-based model for open hypermedia: unifying embedded references and link objects. In Proceedings of the Seventh ACM Conference on Hypertext (Bethesda, Maryland, United States, March 16–20, 1996). HYPERTEXT '96. ACM Press, New York, NY, 149-160.
  5. Jordan, D. S., Russell, D. M., Jensen, A. S., and Rogers, R. A. 1989. Facilitating the development of representations in hypertext with IDE. In Proceedings of the Second Annual ACM Conference on Hypertext (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States). HYPERTEXT '89. ACM Press, New York, NY, 93-104.
  6. T. Berners-Lee et al., "World Wide Web: The Information Universe", Electronic Networking: Research, Applications and Policy", 1(2), 1992.
  7. Nielsen, Jakob "Reviving Advanced Hypertext" published January 3, 2005, visited 27 October 2010, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20050103.html
  8. Link multiple URLs at once with A Few URLs, Lifehacker published 29 May 2007
  9. WebArchive - afewurls.com, saved on 1 June 2007
  10. WebArchive - faturl.com, saved on 29 October 2007
  11. http://brief.ly/


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