Linking to other Websites or pages
This is very easy! Links are
created by using an <A>
or anchor tag. To create a link with the <A> tag we add an attribute
to the tag. HREF
is an attribute of the <A> tag.
It represents a Hyper reference to a web page or program. So to create a
text link to another web page the <A>
tag should look like this:
<A HREF="http://www.mypage.com">My
Page</A>. The text between the opening
and closing anchor tags becomes a clickable link on your page. Notice that
we use the entire web address to create the link.
Creating an Email Link
Another attribute of the <A>
or anchor tag is mailto:
this attribute instructs your web browser to open your Email program. It not
only opens the program but it puts the address from the web page in the
address field of your email for you. To create an Email link your anchor tag
should look like this :
<A HREF="mailto:me@myemail.com">Email
Me</A>. It's that simple!
Linking to another place in your
page
Lets assume that you've
created a page (or you intend to) with a large amount of text covering
various topics. At the top of the page you've created a table of contents
describing the topics in your page and now you would like to link the table
of contents to the topics they represent within your page. This can be done
by using the <A>
tag. By adding a name
attribute to the <A>
tag you create a reference point within your HTML document. It doesn't end
there however. After creating the reference point you'll need to create a
link back to it. Look at the code in the following example:
<H3><A
NAME="Dog">DOG</A></H3>
<H3><A
NAME="CAT">CAT</A></H3>
By using the name attribute in the
anchor tag we have anchored the text DOG and CAT in the headings. The named
anchors should go in the body of your page where these topics would be
covered. At the top of the page in the hypothetical table of contents we
would create the link to our named anchors.
<A HREF="#DOG">To
read about dogs click here.</A>
<A HREF="#CAT">
To read about cats click here.</A>
The #
(number) sign represents a named anchor point in your page. By combining the
#
with the name of the specific anchor point you want it to link to, you tell
the browser what portion of the page to advance to. To see how this works CLICK
HERE
From this point on if you practice
what you learned the more advanced aspects of web design will be fairly easy
to learn!
