Application which use the integrated toolkit are completely shielded from changes to the hypermedia system, and in fact will transparently take advantage of any new services, once the extensions have been updated by the toolkit integrator. Changes to the user-interface toolkit may impact developers who use the integrated toolkit, but these changes would have affected them anyway. Applications which contain integrated widgets provide hypermedia services pervasively throughout their user-interface. These services provide end-users with several advantages. First, hypermedia services are consistent across applications.
Users can reuse the hypermedia-related skills learned in one application in all others.
Second, users have the power to create hypermedia links throughout their computing environment. Third, depending on the link-traversal behavior implemented for the integrated widgets, users can perform a limited type of scripting in which traversals started in one application can control the actions of other applications. Since most open hypermedia systems have the power to integrate third-party applications, such as word processors, spreadsheets, and Web browsers, the range of applications and data which can be linked into the hyperweb is considerable. This type of scalability is limited, however, since there is no guarantee widgets integrated with one service will interoperate with the integrated widgets of another. In addition, there is no guarantee widgets can be integrated with multiple services in a cost-effective manner.