About Glial

Background

The hypertext architecture of the World Wide Web was founded on the idea of publically available resources (documents) that self-index through the use of hyperlinks. That is to say that any part of a named resource published on the (reachable) web should be able to point to any other part of a named published resource elsewhere on the (reachable) web through the use of hyperlink markup. Hyperlinks are therefore constructed using specific markup tags that mark out sections of XML/XHTML content with a need to index, or point to, any other named and reachable point on the web. This leads to a important point, in that normal hyperlinks point to one, and only ever one, block (be that a whole resource, such as a web page, or part of it) anywhere else on the (reachable), essentially creating bridges from one point on the web to another. For most of the web's history this has worked fine, but several of those involved in the web's construction eventually realised that the basic hyperlink model could, and probably should, be extended. Specifically they believed that certain types of hyperlink should be able to point to multiple end points and not just one. From this idea several initiatives arose. These included ideas like the World Wide Web Consortium's XLinks proposal. Nevertheless, to date, none of these have flourised and, although being recognised as web standards, receive little or no support from mainstream browsers. All the while, the variety of content on the web has increased and the plethera of the technologies woven into its fabric has risen. As a result we now see a much more functional web, perhaps pointing to a state of collective conciousness in the not too distant future. Today we can ask just about any question and it will return a sensible answer, we can use it to mine our previously untapped social experience and we can literally see ideas form and disperse in the wild if we care to look hard enough..

So what if we we could extent the functionality of humble hyperlinks and instead of explicitly specifying where they should lead, ask the web to help and automatically make some recommendations as well...

Enter Glial, a simple javascript framework** that extends hyperlink markup to include the intelligence embedded deep into the web today. With a few slight modifications to a standard HTML docuemnt, glial can be used to change hyqperlinks to:

     - Point to multiple end points, both explicitly specified and automatically generated
     - Explain core concepts embedded within hyperlink text
     - Undertake real time, heavyweight analytics such as trend extraction, market position assessment, profitability, mean variance, linear and non-linear forcasting, social cohesion and so on
     - Tap into social media, such as Twitter and LinkedIn
     - Lookup essential reference data, such as names, addresses, times etc

Usage

Gliall tags are formed much the same way as standard hyperlinks. In XHTML and HTML, hyperlinks are defined with the <a> tag:

Example:

<a href="http://www.philiptetlow.co.uk">Philip Tetlow</a>

Additional Glial Tag Parameters:

Glial Parameters
Parameter	Inclusion	Value	Description
desc	Optional		Specify's the text string that Glial will use when it searches the web for recommendations or explanitory information.
tHandel	Optional		Any Twitter handel associated with the hyperlinked text

Format:

Example 1:

Triggering Glial with a specific hyperlink in mind:

<glial href="http://www.philiptetlow.co.uk" desc="Phil Tetlow" tHandel="@DocPhilT">Philip Tetlow</glial>

Example 2:

Triggering Glial and asking it to recommend all associated link end points:

<glial href="?" desc="Phil Tetlow" tHandel="@DocPhilT">Philip Tetlow</glial>

Example 3:

Triggering Glial without the inclusion of a desc parameter:

<glial href="?" tHandel="@DocPhilT">Philip Tetlow</glial>

In this case Gliall takes the text wrapped by the hyperlink as being the search string, i.e. Philip Tetlow in this case.

Example 4:

Triggering Glial without the inclusion of a tHandel parameter:

<glial href="?" desc="Phil Tetlow">Philip Tetlow</glial>

In this case Glial will simply not offer access to Twitter timelines.

Example 5:

Triggering Glial without the inclusion of a desc parameter or any hyperlinked text:

This will produce an error, as Glial has been provided insufficient information to work properly.

Credits

Glial menus are based on Multibox Version: 2.0.6 by Samuel Birch, as modified by Liam Smart and licenced under the Open Source MIT Licence as follows:

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. .