Hypertext Links
Hypertext links are the key to HTML. They are what allow us to link to graphics, files, other pages and sites all over the world. Browsers usually display hypertext links with color and/or underlines to show that it is a link. The only hypertext tag for links is the anchor tag <A>. To specify the rest of the link, we need to identify a destination followed by the closing tag </A>. To link to another page, the format for the link is:
<a href ="AnyPage.htm">Any Page</a>
Notice that there is a space between A and HREF in the opening tab. The actual file name is in quotes. The text that appears between the opening and closing tags is what appears on the screen as the hypertext link. We can also use hypertext links to connect to pages on other web sites by specifying the entire URL. For example, if AnyPage.htm were on another web server, the format for the link is:
<a href ="http://www.anysite.com/folder/file.html">
In this example, "www.anysite.com" is the name of the server, and folder/file.htm is the path to the actual file. A third form of link frequently used is mailto, for linking to an e-mail address. This type of link lets viewers send mail to a pre-specified address. The format is simple too:
<a href ="mailto:emailname@address.com">
Just like with hypertext links, the words the viewer sees are placed between the anchor tags, for example:
<a href="mailto:learnalittle@lycos.com">Send me mail if you must!</a>
"Send me mail if you must!" is what the viewer will see on their screen - like this:
Now you try it -- add a hypertext link or mailto link, and see what happens:
See how easy that was? Let's move on to tables and add some organization to our pages.
