The concept of active pages, hard to define, is easily understood once experienced. Passive pages, like their Gopher forbears, are static, fixed-format, unresponsive. Active pages make best use of the graphical capabilities of each browser while not requiring those capabilities for the information to be understood.
Active pages invite and facilitate reader participation.
They are sensitive to context. They draw on resources outside the Web and make them accessible within it. They foster a rich, deep and diverse communication milieu in the multimedia age.