Websites have a wide range of purposes and serve a variety of functions for readers. At some point, the idea that visitors to websites are "readers" of hypertext becomes untenable. Most web visitors never move beyond the interface to view the actual texts—the languages (HTML, Javascript, PHPscript, CGIscript, etc.) that give rise to the experience of a web page.

While the veil of the interface may produce readers capable of experiencing a variety of media (video, audio, still images, color palettes, organization, etc.) as text, Johndan Johnson-Eilola argues that individuals who engage with the visual representations of hypertext are more appropriately called users. The user of hypertext assumes a more active role in the production of the meaning of particular hypertexts. Hypertext becomes a tool ready to be manipulated.

This tool imagery seems to shift the uses of hypertext far beyond both scholarship and the creative arts by opening the door to an instrumentalist view of hypertext. Readers typically approach a particular hypertext with specific goals in mind. One reader might visit a hypertext to check movie start times, another visits the site to locate film reviews, and a third person needs directions.

And the image of the hypertext reader as a user may ultimately be productive for the project of composition instruction. Compositionists want to produce active readers, as reflected in the appeal of Freire's Pedagogy of The Oppressed. College freshmen and sophomores typically see themselves as recipients of a writer's ideas when reading. This is highly problematic for research writing instructors whose aim is to help students learn to use texts as tools to produce meaning through writing.

The language of user may actually help research writers recognize the value of treating texts as tools in the production of their own texts (hyper- or not).

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