”Interactive documents” are another area in which objects can be used. These are illustrations which are employed in electronic spare parts catalogs or manuals.

When a document of this type is displayed on the screen, the user can click on specific areas to request the information he needs. As a general rule, every document is therefore provided with buttons for paging or with menus containing the relevant commands. Numerous applications also include hyperlinks. These are cross-references to other parts of the manual. If a user clicks on a certain area of the illustration or text, the hyperlink will be executed. This can have the effect, for example, of retrieving another page onto the monitor or executing a predefined action. The areas where the user clicks to execute an action are known as hotspots.