Would you like to make this site your homepage? It's fast and easy...
Yes, Please make this my home page!
Now
that we are more comfortable with Web browsers, you are ready
to learn about hypertext and hyperlinks. No Internet tutorial
would be complete without a brief introduction to HTML (Hypertext Markup
Language). Basically, HTML is
the special programming language of Web pages that Web browsers
can read. A Web page, or hypertext document, is an electronic
file that contains elements that users can select, usually by
clicking a mouse, to open another document. Hypertext suggests
that it is more than merely text on a computer screen. The most
important feature of hypertext is the concept of a hyperlink.
A hyperlink, or link, is a specially formatted text element or
graphic that can be clicked to jump to another file or location
in a document.
Hypertext Links
- webLearner is a collection of hypertext
documents. The colored and underlined text (for example: linksample.html) corresponds to hyperlinks
to other documents, other locations within the present document,
or to another Website. Clicking once on these links (try it)
will take you to the corresponding document. If you place the
cursor over the link, the corresponding address for the link
usually appears at the Status Bar found at bottom of the browser window.
Hold your mouse over a link above without clicking and see what
happens! If you did it correctly, you also would have noticed
that your cursor (
) had
transformed into a hand with a pointed finger (
).
-
- The example above
of a link was to a text file, but links can correpond to much
more interesting things. For instance, try the following links
below! Use the browser's "Back" button, or hold the
mouse button down and select "Back", to return to this
page.
-
-
Browser Navigation
Buttons
- The navigation buttons
for your browsers are found at the top of your browser window.
The following image shows the menu of Netscape Navigator 4.61
for the Macintosh. The Back
button, as well as other navigation aids such as Home and Forward are evident. Simply click on the buttons
to see what they can do!
-
Visited and Unvisited
Links
- Your browser is set
up to distinguish visited from unvisited hyperlinks. The color
of links you have already visited will be different from unvisited
ones. The exact colors depend on your browser settings and how
the page you are viewing has been written. Using Netscape Navigator
with default settings, unvisited links are blue and visited links appear as purple. You are free to modify
these settings to your liking by specifying your preferences.
We'll learn more about how to customize our browser in the next
topic, Netscape Navigator.
Other Clickable
Objects
- In addition to words,
other objects on a page may be clickable links. For instance,
images may be linked to something else. This will usually be
indicated by a colored border around the image, or when the cursor
turns into a hand with a pointing finger when it is over a clickable
link. When in doubt, click and see what happens!
-
-
- The image shown above
is a link, since if the mouse is held over it the cursor turns
into a pointing hand. Click the image and see what happens! If
your computer is able to play sounds, you would hear a rooster
call.
