GDT 150 Design for the Internet: Fall 2002

September 18

Types of Links

Absolute

Gives the full web address of the linked document, including the transfer protocol.

Example: <a href="http://www.google.com">

Relative

Gives the URL relative to the current document. Assumes linked document is on the same server as linking document.

Example 1: a link to a document in the same folder: <a href="page.html">

Example 2: a link to a document in a folder within the current folder: <a href="documents/page.html">

Example 3: a link to a document in the folder containing the current document's folder: <a href="../page.html">

Root-relative

Links that use the site root (domain name) as a starting point. All the folder information is stripped off the URL. Root-relative links start with a slash.

Example: to link to www.chriscassell.net/classes.html from this page, <a href="/classes.html">

Never use this type of link on the student server because the root of the site is stu.wccnet.org, not your home directory.

Internal

Link to a point within a page. Internal links require 2 parts: the link itself, and the named anchor that the link points to. Can point to either the current document, or a point in another document.

Example 1: to link to a specific paragraph on the current page: <a href="#anchorname"> points to an anchor with a name: <a name="anchorname">

Example 2: to link to a specific paragraph on a different page: <a href="page.html#anchorname"> points to an anchor on page.html with a name: <a name="anchorname">

Email Link

Spawns the default email client

Example: to send an email to me: <a href="mailto:who@where.com">