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Links are one of several issues that
makes HTML document special. A link is a
connection between the document you are looking at with your browser and some
other document somewhere else - in your PC or in any other server hooked
up to the Internet. Links are used for two different purposes: |
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1. A link may supply part of
your document without you (the viewer) noticing it. |
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All graphics and pictures, for example, are not
a direct part of your document but are taken from some other file and put into
your document. There are many more instances where parts of your document are
defined by links to documents stored somewhere else in your (or somebody elses)
file system. |
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As a user, you are not necessarily aware of this
and there is nothing you can do about this. It only becomes important when you
want to download a web-page. If you do not download all the documents tied to
the web page you want and put them into a file structures identical to the one
used by the producer of the web page, some parts (e.g. the pictures) will be
missing if you reconstruct the page from your files. |
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Some browsers, however, do this automatically, so
you do not have to worry about it. |
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2. A link may lead you from
the document you are viewing to a different document. |
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Those are the well-known links always marked -
usually by a differently colored and underlined
word. But that is not de rigeur - links can be activated by clicking
on a picture or even at a totally undistinguished part of the document or
anything else (if that makes sense is a different question). |
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These user-activated
links may be be subdivided in three categories or hierarchies:
- Links to the outside world - an absolute
link
- Links to documents in the same file tree as the starting document - a
relative link
- Links to a certain place in the actual document - an
internal link or bookmark link
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The way you construct a link should take this
hierarchical system into account - properly done, it saves time in writing and
displaying a document. |
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In other word, there are smart ways
and not so smart ways how a link can be introduced into an HTML
document. We will start to use links in the following paragraph. |
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