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This article discusses the design issues involved in delivering Web-based learning materials. An existing application in the medical domain-JointZone-is used to illustrate how personalization and an interactive environment can be incorporated into Web-based learning. This work applies the combination of an adaptive hypermedia, situated-learning approach and hypermedia linking concepts to facilitate online learning. A usability study was carried out on the work described and an evaluation was undertaken to measure the effect of personalization on various learning factors. The evaluation outcome was analysed subjectively and objectively. The results proved to be contradictory but, nevertheless, the work gives new insights into the use of technology to support learning. Foreword I knew David Squires from the early 1980s, mainly through meeting him at CAL conferences and then as our friendship grew through more regular get-togethers. He was a wonderful person to work with and to call a friend-he was warm, witty and wise, and fun to be around. I have tremendous respect for his work and his influence on the world of learning technologies will be sorely missed. He was always interested in empirical work, and in the relationship between human-computer interaction and teaching and learning. So I am delighted, with my co-authors, to submit this paper for the ALT-J special issue dedicated to his memory.

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It has always been difficult to determine to what extent a user has read a page especially in the area of educational adaptive hypermedia systems. We propose the use of an individual's effective reading speed to estimate how much of a page a user has read during their browsing activity. This method is currently used to apply history-based link annotation in a medical web-based learning application, JointZone. A validation test of this work has shown a positive result in approximating user's reading value when compared to conventional methods.