HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
2.7. Hyperlinks
While text may be the meat and bones of an HTML or XHTML document,
the heart is hypertext. Hypertext gives users the ability to retrieve and
display a different document in their own or someone else's collection
simply by a click of the keyboard or mouse on an associated word or
phrase (
hyperlink
) in the document. Use these interactive hyperlinks to
help readers easily navigate and find information in your own or others'
collections of otherwise separate documents in a variety of formats, in-
cluding multimedia, HTML, XHTML, other XML, and plain text. Hyperlinks
literally bring the wealth of knowledge on the whole Internet to the tip of
the mouse pointer.
To include a hyperlink to some other document in your own collection or
on a server in Timbuktu, all you need to know is the document's unique
address and how to drop an
anchor
into your document.
2.7.1. URLs
While it is hard to believe, given the billions of them out there, every
document and resource on the Internet has a unique address, known as
its
uniform resource locator
(URL; commonly pronounced "you-are-ell").
A URL consists of the document's name preceded by the hierarchy of dir-
ectory names in which the file is stored (
pathname
), the Internet
domain
name
of the server that hosts the file, and the software and manner by
which the browser and the document's host server communicate to ex-
change the document (
protocol
):
Here are some sample URLs:
•
price_list.html
•
../figs/my_photo.png
