Hypertext is a system of providing more information from within a document. When documents are linked, a word or words are highlighted, and when the word is clicked or otherwise selected, the linked document appears. Within the Web, you move between documents and between sites with links. A link can go to any type of Internet resource such as a text file, a telnet session, a Gopher, a Usenet newsgroup, and so on. For the past year or so, I have become familiar with using e-mail, setting up a mailing list, searching ftp sites, and tried a line mode Web access.
Line mode offers access to the Web in a totally text format.
Any graphics embedded in documents cannot be viewed in the text format. I read the Web sections of several Internet books and they offer descriptions of what the Web is and list some nifty Web sites. That was fine, but didn't tell me everything I wanted to know. I knew that if I had the right setup I could see all kinds of neat graphics and be led quickly from one place to another. Most of the books tell about the text format connection, and only mention that graphics is available.