(FORTUNE Magazine) – One profound effect of the Web is that people are increasingly comfortable with documents that mesh graphics, sound, video, animation, and, of course, hyperlinks. Software startup Trellix is betting that the world is ready for an office application designed for that medium, one that is to the wired, multimedia world what Microsoft Office is to the printed page.

Just another startup based on a fanciful notion? We'll see. Trellix was founded by Dan Bricklin, the guy who invented VisiCalc. That early spreadsheet, forerunner of Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Excel, was the first killer app for the personal computer. Using VisiCalc, anyone with a computer could recalculate interrelated figures instantly. Suddenly, small businesses were able to do financial analyses previously possible only for large companies with lots of accountants. Many businesses bought their first computers to run VisiCalc.

Now Bricklin is betting he has a new paradigm buster. Unlike VisiCalc, Trellix is designed not for number crunchers but for anyone in an office who creates or uses electronic documents. It helps you easily create documents with the look and feel of a Web page. Whereas Microsoft Word is good for creating pages that you intend to print out and read on paper, Trellix lets you set up a kind of "smart" frame for viewing collections of documents, or parts of a single document, onscreen.

What does it look like? On either side of your text in the center of the screen are borders with hyperlinks to other parts of the document. Along the top, typically, is a map that shows at all times where in the document, or set of documents, you are. A Trellix document can be linked to all sorts of files, including Web pages, Powerpoint presentation graphics images, and Excel spreadsheets. Change a detail in one place, and the whole document automatically reflects the change. Anyone with a PC can view a Trellix document.

Version 1.0 of the software will be available in late September, priced under $100. Trellix will sell it initially as a tool for creating manuals and technical documents that can be read easily on a PC screen. Example: the handbook that explains your corporate benefits. In the old world, you'd have to work your way through a two-pound paper tome. With a manual created in Trellix, you survey the map to get a sense of what's where, read the parts you care about, skip the rest, and get on with your real work.

--Michael H. Martin