In this lesson we will do a quick review of HTML links.

1. HTML standard and named anchor links
2. Relative and absolute paths

Links allow us to connect our pages and sites to each other. Arguably they give the world wide web its power by simply allowing one document to lead to the next.

<a href="http://example.com">This is a text link</a>

An anchor link <a> accepts an href (hypertext reference) attribute, which points to the location of the page or content we are linking to.

<a href="http://example.com">
  <img src="myimage.jpg" alt="Alternate text">
</a>

Anchor links can also wrap images as well as text. In fact anything we wrap a <a> around becomes a clickable linked item.

<a href="mailto:[email protected]">This is an email link</a>

<a href="tel:555-555-5555">This is a phone number link</a>

Special prefixes in the href can trigger specific actions.mailto: allows us to open an email editor; "tel:" tells cellular devices to dial a number.

<p id="tips">Useful Tips Section</p>
<a href="#tips">Jump to Useful Tips Section</a>

We can also create named anchor links that will scroll to content elsewhere in the same page. This is done by giving an id attribute to one element, and then setting the href of a link to #id where the ids match.

about.html

Relative paths describe the location of resources within the same file system.

http://example.com/about.html

Absolute paths describe the location of resources on the entire internet at large.

It is prefered that you use the relative path when linking to content within your own website. Then use absolute paths when linking to content on other remote websites.

• HTML links can be defined as <a href="myfile.html">link text here</a>.

• Mozilla Dev Network - Learn HTML
• HTML Element Lookup Reference

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