246996016-HTML5-Step-by-Step

Hyperlinking to a Web Page 69
The opening page of the US version of the Microsoft Web site opens. Now type this URL
instead:
http://www.microsoft.com/en/us/default.aspx
The same page loads. The first time, when you omitted the file name, the Web server
responded by sending the default file, which is named default.aspx.
Note The URL in this example points to a page named default.aspx. ASP stands for Active
Server Pages, which is an advanced technology used for commercial Web development. Pages
created with ASP typically have .asp or .aspx extensions. For your own pages, you should
continue to use the .htm extension.
If you want to link to a specific page, you must specify the complete file name. For
example, if you wanted to provide a direct link to the page where users can download
Windows Media Player, you would use this tag:
Download Windows Media Player
Using Relative and Absolute Paths
Paths that contain a complete address that anyone can use to get to that page are called
absolute paths. Absolute paths are very reliable, but they are also long and awkward to
type. For example:
Diagnosing Foliage
Problems
When you are linking to files in the same Web site as the link itself, you do not need to
include the complete path to the file; you can simply provide its name. When the file
is in the same folder, you need only supply the file name. For example, if the index.htm
and foliage.htm pages of The Garden Company Web site were in the same folder, in the
index.htm file, you could refer to foliage.htm like this:
Diagnosing Foliage Problems
This is called a relative path, because the destination file is relative to the current file’s
location. Relative paths make it easier to develop and test your Web site in a different
file location than the one where it will eventually be stored. For example, in this book,
you’ll be doing most of your development in the Documents\Microsoft Press\HTML5 SBS
folder, which would typically not be the final destination for a site you are developing. By
making as many relative references as possible, you avoid the need to re-code every URL
when your site is moved to its final destination.