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Basic HTML: Primer #4--Creating Links to Other Pages

Basic HTML: Primer #4
Creating Links to Other Pages

by Joe Burns, Ph.D.

Use these to jump around or read it all...
[Creating A Hypertext Link][Here's How It's Done]
[Email Links From Your Page]

Creating A Hypertext Link

Welcome to day four. Today you will learn only one thing: how to create a link to another page. It's a set flag format like any of the others you have seen so far. Once you learn the format, you can make as many links as you want to any other page you want.

Now an example: What is below would create a link to the HTML Goodies home page.

<A HREF="http://www.htmlgoodies.com">Click Here For HTML Goodies</A>

Here's What's Happening

A stands for Anchor. It begins the link to another page.
HREF stands for Hypertext REFerence. That's a nice, short way of saying to the browser, "this is where the link is going to go."
http://www.htmlgoodies.com is the FULL ADDRESS of the link. Also Notice that the address has an equal sign in front of it and is enclosed in quotes. Why? Because it's an attribute of the Anchor flag, a command inside of a command. Remember that from last primer?
Where it reads "Click Here For HTML Goodies" is where you write the text you want to appear on the page. What is in that space will appear on the page for the viewer to click. So write something that denotes the link.
/A ends the entire link command.

Here's what will appear on the page using the command above...

Click Here For HTML Goodies

Now, without clicking, simply lay your pointer on the blue words. You'll see the address of the link you created come up along the bottom.

What To Write For The Link?

There are a couple different schools of thought on this. One suggests that what you write for links should be quite blatant. This includes text like "Click here for this" or "Here's a link to..." The other states that since the hypertext links will be blue (or whatever color they're set to), that the links should be just another word in the text set up an a link.
I believe a little of both. I'm of the opinion your readers should be allowed to have a very easy time of it all in terms of navigating your web pages. But it's your page and you make that decision.

Allowing People to Write To You From Your Page

This is what's known as a mailto: command. It follows the same coding scheme as the hypertext link above. What this format does is place blue wording on the screen that people can click to send you a piece of email.

Here's the pattern:

<A HREF="mailto:jburns@htmlgoodies.com">Click Here To Write Me</A>

Notice it's the same format as a link except in a link you write "mailto:" in place of the http:// and your email address in place of the page address. Yes, you still need the </A> flag at the end. Please notice there is NO SPACE between the colon and the email address.

Here's what you get using the "Mailto:" command above:

Click Here To Write Me

Go ahead, click on it. I know you're dying to. You'll get an email dialogue box addressed to me. Then you can write if you want. The same thing will work for you. Just place your email address in place of mine following the format above.

And that wraps up Primer #4. Next time we get into the fun part of the World Wide Web, images.

On to Primer #5

Back to the HTML Goodies Home Page

[Creating A Hypertext Link][Here's How It's Done]
[Email Links From Your Page]

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Basic HTML: Primer #4Creating Links to Other Pages

Creating A Hypertext Link

Here's What's Happening

Allowing People to Write To You From Your Page

Basic HTML: Primer #4
Creating Links to Other Pages