o_19octlt3v29m1ul81r9513q81i4ra.pdf

68 Chapter 5
Practice Files Before you can use the practice files provided for this chapter, you need
to download and install them from the book’s companion content location. See “Using
the Practice Files” at the beginning of this book for more information.
Hyperlinking to a Web Page
No matter what type of hyperlink you want to create, the basic syntax is the same. It
starts with the tag, and then uses an href= attribute which provides the URL or the
path to the destination. For example, an opening tag might look like this:
This is followed by the text that will appear underlined as the link text that you click, or
by a reference to the image that will serve as a hyperlink. (You’ll learn more about images
in Chapter 9, “Displaying Graphics.”) After that text is the closing tag. Here’s a complete
example:
Visit Microsoft.com for the latest
information.
When viewed in a browser, this produces a text-based hyperlink similar to that shown in
the following image:
Hyperlinks are underlined by default. You can specify alternative formatting for hyperlinks
by using styles, as explained in Chapter 6, “Introduction to Style Sheets.”
Using Partial Paths and Filenames
In some cases, you do not need to provide a file name or a complete path to the destination
in a hyperlink. It depends on the context and the file’s name.
If you do not link to a specific page, the server that hosts the Web site responds by
displaying the default page for that site (if one is available). If a browser does not request
a specific page when accessing a server, most servers will send the default page, which is
usually named either index or default. Perhaps you wondered why the main page of The
Garden Company’s Web site is called index.htm—now you know.
In Internet Explorer, type the following URL in the Address bar:
http://www.microsoft.com/en/us