Chapter 2. Links and Navigation

What really distinguishes the Web from other mediums is the way in which a web page can contain links (or hyperlinks) that you can click on to be taken from one page to another page. The link can be a word, phrase, or image.

When you link to another page in your own web site, the link is known as an internal link. When you link to a different site, it is known as an external link. In this chapter you will learn how to create both types of link. You will also see how you can link to a specific point within a page.

While you will learn the basics of linking from one Web page to another fairly quickly, it is also helpful to learn some other concepts, such as how to structure your site well by storing different files into separate folders or directories. Once you understand directory structure, you can link between pages of your own site using shorter links called relative URLs.

In this chapter, you learn the following:

  • How to link between pages of your site

  • How to link to other sites

  • How to structure the folders on your web site

  • How to link to specific parts of a page in your site

Basic Links

A link is specified using the <a> element. Anything between the opening <a> tag and the closing </a> tag becomes part of the link that users can click in a browser.

Linking to Other Web Pages

To link to another web page, the opening <a> tag must carry an attribute called href; the value of the href attribute is the name of the file you are linking to.

As an example, here is ...

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