When I began writing HTML documents (and I intentionally avoid calling the work "hypertextual"), I worked with simple external links and with anchored internal links on a single page. I had not considered and was not capable of making any site built by sophisticated linking practices. However, as I read about hypertext and read actual hypertexts, I realize that the very definition of hypertext and descriptions of "good" hypertexts focus on the linking capabilities that connect a site's nodes.

The sites that I have worked on since the Classical Rhetoric Web-o-graphy have improved in several ways. For one, my basic knowledge of programming in HTML and JavaScript have improved, so I have more options. More importantly, my consideration of the options available to me and the needs of the people who will use the sites I design has led me to make better decisions about my work. I see the important differences between the course designs and my first page as one bound primarily, though not entirely, to the ways I have looked at the connections between nodes: the links.

I attempt to practice an "ethical" linking that leads to greater facility in navigating my websites. I attempt to couch each link in descriptions or contexts that will let the users know where a particular link will take them. I attempt to minimize the amount of many-to-one linking and to mark, indexically, the nodes that have been visited before. I know that many people do not like getting lost on the web when they are in search of specific information--as on a class website. By making clear, through the link's functions, what a specific link will do, I think I make the use of my websites a mrore efficient experience. My linking practices inform and are informed by my theory of links