-- HyperLinks --
HyperLinks are how we get around on a website, and on the Internet. Without HyperLinks to other files and folders, the internet could not function.
A HyperLink can be a picture (or part of it. see bit_mapping), a word, a sentence, in fact, anything on the page. It can link to, a file, a picture, a page and another website (which really is a web page.) or a portion thereof.
There is a very good page on HyperLinks at www.w3.org.
In simple terms, a link is constructed with two anchors and a direction. The first anchor is the destination: < a href="destination.html"> which is, of course, where the Link will take you.
The second anchor is the Source, which can be anything on the page, which will often be underlined, or change color when the cursor is over it. In the case of a picture, or graphic, it may have a colored border. This depends on how the website is set up.
When the link goes to a certain portion of a page, it is also called an Anchor. It doesn't have to stay on the same page as the HyperLink.
A simple link to another page would be written like this: <a href="other_page.html">Another page</a> This is assuming the page is in the same location as the link page.
If the target page is in another folder, say one called "my_pages", the link would look like this: <a href="my_pages/other_page.html">Another page</a>. Please notice there are NO spaces in the filenames.
Now, let's say there is a very long page with a section we want to link to near the bottom. But, we don't want to make someone scroll down the length of the page to get to it.
Write the code like this: <a href="other_page.html#the_place">Another page</a>. Then in the page "another_page.html", at the spot where we want to go, we put the code: <a name="the_place"></a>. If you click on the link above to bit_mapping, you will notice it takes you right to the section of the page that tells about Bit Mapping.
Notice there is no space between the tag other_page.html and the # defining the anchor name. If one is left there, it might work, however, validation will say there's an error.
These are called Relative Links
Now, a situation might arise, especially with menus, where you have a page menu several levels deep, maybe in an Include and want to use the same menu code for all pages. That's where Absolute Links come in.
A novel way to look at it is: There are many rooms in your house, just as there are many folders in a website. You can give directions to an item in a room in your house in two ways. You can give directions from where you are right now. This would be Relative. This is fine, except, the directions will change depending on which room you start from.
However, if directions are given from the front door, Absolute, It doesn't matter where you happen to be, the directions will remain the same.
This would be written: <a href="http://www.yoursite.com/other_page.html">Another page</a>
What we are doing is going in the front door of the website.
For more information check out Media College