In the hypermedia communication process, authors are connected to readers through hypermedia applications. The underlying software is an important part of the “communication channel” between authors and readers: it is effective if it is “transparent.” This means that hypermedia software must be flexible and powerful, to support naïve users as well as “experienced navigators;” it must be developed and tested before contents, because contents, in real projects, are released very late; it must be robust and error-free; and finally it must be inexpensive with respect to contents, because contents are the focus of the production effort. For all these reasons, the run-time software must be contents independent and application independent; in fact, it can be powerful enough only if its development costs can be shared over a large number of projects. Two applications, built around a reusable run-time engine based on the previous considerations, are presented in the paper.