Web Design Garage

Using Absolute Paths

An absolute path gives the full URL of the desired Web page, including the http://www part, like this:

<a href="http://www.pearson.com/">Absolute path</a>

In other words, an absolute path is exactly the same as the URL that you type into a browser's Address field. To go to the page in question, you don't have to type a different URL when you use a different computer or if you're on a different Web site. That's what makes the path absolute—it's always the same, no matter where on the Web the browser happens to be looking.

TIP Use absolute paths for external links, or links to pages that don't belong to your Web site. In fact, you have to use absolute paths for this purpose. Document-relative and root-relative links don't ...