hypertext links

by Workshop, 8 July 1998

what are links?
Links in a HTML web page are perhaps the most important feature of HTML and the World Wide Web. Links allow a visitor to your page to click on the link and then to have another page displayed in their browser. Links are important because they allow information to be shared and organized in a logical manner.

Link tags take the general form of <A HREF="url">item to link</A>. The <A HREF part of the tag specifies that it is a link to another web page and the address of the page is enclosed within double quotes. The link is applied to everything before the terminating </A>.

Links are generally used in two ways. They are either used to link some text to another web page on the Internet or to link a picture to another web page on the Internet, whether that page is your own or someone elses.

applying links to text
To apply a link to a section of text, you enclose the text to be linked between the <A HREF...> and </A> tags.

code	result
<A HREF="http://www.riada.com"> Riada's home page </A>	Riada's home page

applying a link to images
You may also specify a link for an image so that when it is clicked, the browser will show the link that is associated with the image. In the previous example, we had some text (Riada's Home Page) that was enclosed by the <A HREF...></A> container tag. If we replace this text with the HTML tag for an image, we can link that image to a web site.

code	result
<A HREF="http://www.riada.com"> <IMG SRC="rightarrow.gif"> </A>