Writing for the Web: A Primer for Librarians

by Eric H. Schnell

Hypertext Links

Hypertext links embedded into Web documents serve several purposes. Their primary role is to facilitate access to various text-based and multimedia Internet resources. Links also facilitate navigation between pages of a single Web document or between resources at a particular site. Hypertext links are also used to highlight footnotes, provide access to support materials, and to define words or clarify concepts.

Using HTML, a hypertext link is created using the tag <A HREF >. The text associated with this tag becomes the hypertext link to another resource or document, local or remote. Hypertext links can not only be used to access resources available on the Web, but also those requiring use of a terminal session, located on Gopher servers, and utilizing multimedia formats.

The association between hypertext on a Web page and particular resource is commonly referred to as a hypertext reference. The following is an example of how a hypertext reference is created using HTML:

<A HREF="/eric/papers.html">Eric's Papers</A>
The words Eric's Papers are now associated to a Web document named papers.html in the directory eric. When a Web browser encounters this hypertext reference it highlights the word(s) with a color or an underline to indicate a reference exists. Clicking on the words then moves the viewer from the current document to the new document.

Pathnames

A Pathname refers to the logical directory path and filename which the browser uses to locate the resource. There are two different types of pathnames used when creating hypertext links: Relative and Absolute.

The use of a Relative Pathname assumes the associated resource resides on the same server, in the same directory, or in a subdirectory relative to document currently being viewed. The information about access protocol, directory path, etc. is based on the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) used to reach the current document.

Here is an example of a relative pathname using HTML:

<A HREF="url.html">URL's</A> 
There are many advantages to using relative pathnames. Their use eliminates the need to add http://bones.med.ohio-state.edu/eric/papers/primer/ to every link. Since the majority of the references are relative to the table of contents page webdocs.html, moving this paper to another site or directory will require little editing. Finally, relative pathnames are used to navigate readers between the pages of this document and to and from the glossary.

Absolute Pathnames are used when making reference to documents which are not directly related. They are most often used when creating references to resources located elsewhere on a server or throughout the Internet. The entire directory structure needs to be present for the browser to locate the referenced document. Here is the same example as above utilizing an absolute pathname:

<A HREF="/eric/papers/primer/url.html">URL's</A> 
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URLs

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Page Updated: Tuesday, 24-Nov-98
http://bones.med.ohio-state.edu/eric/papers/primer/links.html