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Daily Prophet

HTML: Links

Your website should potentially be a network of smaller sites linked together through what's known as a Hypertext Link. If all of your information was on one really long website it'd be harder to navigate, take longer to load, etc. Basically, it would flunk the Compatibility test. So, break it up, mingle a little, have some fun -- with links.

Creating Hypertext Links

To make a link, all you need to know is the document's address and how to include an anchor in your HTML code.

URLs
Every single page on the internet, every single file, has its own unique address, or URL. To link to something, you'll need to know the URL of the file or page you're linking to.

<A> - The Anchor Tag
This tag is used to define both the source and destination of a link. Anything that appears between the start anchor tag <A>, and the end anchor tag </A> becomes activated by the browser, allowing the user to click on that part of the document to take them somewhere else. Links are not limited to just text -- you can also use graphics as links by placing the image between the anchor tags in teh same way that you would plain text. (Note: most HTML editors will do that for you, but again, it's important for you to know this.)

The attributes of the <A> tag are:
HREF
Target

HREF
This is that tag that tells the browser where to take you when you click on it. Here's the code:
HREF="url"
In the place of "url", put the full URL, or if the page you're linking to is in the same directory, you can simply put the file name. For example, if you were linking to a page about your dog Sparky and that page were in the same directory, just link to HREF="sparky.html"

TARGET
This tells the browser what window to open the link in. Sometimes this can be handy, and sometimes it can get really annoying. We recommend you only use it when linking to other peoples' pages, but not between the separate pages of your own site.
TARGET=_blank

Next up: the exciting world of tables!

This tutorial is ©2001, InkBlot, inc. Nothing may be taken or "borrowed" without permission. Cute little kid artwork by Havana Street.