In hypertext we often are in a similar situation as in the find command. Linking essentially moves the user in an abstract space without giving much indication on the whereabouts. When calculating clusters in hypertexts a neighborhood relation is defined that makes the structure of the hypertext explicit. Links that do not fit into that clustering scheme then become shortcuts and magic features. Collection of Web-pages also form clusters that are located on the same server or in the same directory, or they form clusters around a topic even when located on several servers.
Links leading out of such a cluster again lead to another context and therefore are magic features.
Magic features allow rapid change of context but when this change is not announced users are not prepared for this change and may be disoriented at first. When designing the user interface one of the objectives is therefore to help users grasp the context switch. Taking the example of the alias in a file system, in particular the alias in the Macintosh file system. Objects and their aliases look too similar This design makes the alias easier to understand at first but the similarity does not help understanding that it actually is a shortcut through the folder space and not identical to the real thing. Using the alias also does not really show that the user moves to another part of the folder space - maybe even to a folder located on another machine on the network.