The user may also open a separate window for any node to view multiple nodes simultaneously. Another issue in hypertext usability is predictability. The study reported that the user could not find the collaborating classes in the class hierarchy. One possible solution to this problem would be for the interface to provide a list of all classes referenced in all methods of the selected class and its subclasses. In addition to presenting the links as a textual list of class names, a graphical browser could be used to show the relationships among the set of classes that comprise an application.
Programmers tend to adopt coding strategies that vary depending on the specifics of their coding.
The presence of these diverse strategies suggests that the interface should provide support for task switching. Programmers should be able to annotate a given task, identify it to the computer, and put away the associated window. The previous section hinted that short-term or working memory plays a role in the cognitive processes of a person engaged in a programming task. These results suggest that programmer performance should degrade if programmers are required to make too many hypertext jumps to obtain the information they need for their task. It is possible to use the context of a given node to restrict the available set of links.