Hyperlinks - The Basics - Cliff Lamere

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hyperlinks - The Basics

 

by Cliff Lamere    Feb 2002

 

Revised 28 Oct 2002

 

 


 

What you will see on this webpage has been learned by trial and error, seldom from something I have read or was told.  Therefore, I may be wrong when I try to present my experience as if it was that way in all circumstances or on all browsers, email programs, or word processors.  I have used Netscape 4.7 as a browser until recently when I discovered that Internet Explorer 5.0 was so much better (my own webpages look terrible in Netscape unless they are simple like this one.  Netscape doesn't present the same fonts, the same colors, and there are other differences that are even more important).

 

Hyperlinks are often called just links.  When you click on a link, you will be taken to the file represented by the hyperlink.

 

An example of a hyperlink follows.  

 

     http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~clifflamere/Bp/BP-AlbanyRDC.htm

 

A hyperlink consists of the following 4 parts:

1)  protocol    [ http:// ]

2)  host name (server/company providing the website space)    [ freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/ ]

3)  path to document  (list of folder and subfolder(s) where document is located)    [ ~clifflamere/Bp/ ]

4)  document name    [ BP-AlbanyRDC.htm ]

 

Except for the host name, all parts of a hyperlink are case sensitive .  An upper case letter used in place of a lower case letter (or vice versa) in case sensitive areas will cause the hyperlink to fail.


1)  Hyperlinks for webpages usually begin with http:// which is called the protocol.  Anything between the protocol and the first space, or hard return at the end of a line, will be part of the link.  Even if the http:// is all alone, it sometimes "thinks" it is complete when it is followed by a space, as in an email or word processor document.  [A hard return is the code you get when you hit Enter.]

When someone recites a link to you for a website, they are likely to omit the first part.  A person will usually just say "www.something".  They are giving you an incomplete link.  Some website addresses, like mine, don't contain www.  Nevertheless, if you enter either kind of incomplete link into the browser's address box, the browser automatically adds http:// and tries to find that address.  

 

Besides http:// there are also hyperlinks that begin with:

file://          for files

ftp://           for ftp servers

mailto://     for email addresses.

2)  Hyperlinks cannot have a space in them.  Sometimes they will have an underscore in them, but since the whole link is underlined you don't see the underscore, so you get the impression that there is a space between some words.

To demonstrate this, here is a partial link, followed by the actual link, which seems to have spaces in it.  Notice that the http:// makes the second one become an active link.

www.nygbs.org/info/articles/NYS_census_contents.html

http://www.nygbs.org/info/articles/NYS_census_contents.html

Also, here is a link with a space in the middle of the word 'albany'.  Notice that the second half of the link is not colored or underlined because it is no longer part of the link.  The first half is not enough to get you to the webpage, so you should never put a space in a hyperlink.

http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/alb any/census1790.html

 

3)  Hyperlinks cannot be on more than one line.

As an example, here is my website's URL (Uniform Resource Locator, or website address).  The first one is complete and would take you to my site if you clicked on it.  The second one has been split onto two lines. Only the first fragment is active, so if you click on it, you will not arrive at my website.  Instead, you will get some sort of error message.

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~clifflamere/


http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb
.com/~clifflamere/

If you find a link in an email that doesn't work, check to see what is on the next line.  If the link has been split, you can join the parts (without a space between them) and it will then be accurate.  It won't become an active link, but it will work if it gets put into the Address box near the top of your browser, and then you press Enter.  You could also mail it to yourself and then it would be active, but that would be too much trouble.

4)  Avoid typing a hyperlink into your browser or into an email whenever possible.  One wrong letter will cause a link to fail.  Use copy and paste instead.  Clicking on the address in the address box will cause it to become highlighted. Copy it, then paste it into a browser, email or word processor.  This method avoids typing errors.

5)  Hyperlinks are very often case sensitive.  Many RootsWeb addresses are entirely lower case, but mine are a combination of upper and lower case.  A RootsWeb website will fail if you type in a letter with the wrong case (except in the host name).

6)  Hyperlinks will be underlined and will be colored unless you have chosen them to be black.  Black hyperlinks are a poor idea, because you can't tell them from underlined text.  I underline my black text at times.  I have had people write to tell me that my link in a webpage didn't work.  When I checked it out, there was no link, just underlined text.

So, how can you tell if something is a link?  Put the mouse cursor on what you think is a link.  If it is actually a link, the arrow head will turn into a hand with one finger extended.  I have seen websites where the person chose a font which was the same color as the links.  You can't tell them from underlined text except by the method described here or by clicking on them to see if they work as a hyperlink.

7)  Hyperlink color can be controlled by the person making the webpage.  Usually, there is one color for an unvisited link and a different color for one that has been visited.  The difference in color is helpful to the viewer so that they can tell if they had chosen that link before.

8)  Hyperlink color can be controlled by you.  At least in the Netscape browser, you can go to Edit / Preferences and there is a place to choose whether to use the webmaster's colors or override them and use the Netscape colors.  


You should be able to choose how long you want the computer to keep track of which links you have already used.  That is useful if you go to a site next month and don't want to go through every link to see which ones you have already looked at.

9)  Each webpage that you visit could have its own color selection for visited and unvisited hyperlinks.  I choose different link colors for each of my webpages.  I try to make the colors something that will not clash with the color scheme of a webpage.

10)  All links on a webpage tend to have the same color.  They can't be different colors for each paragraph.  However, there are ways to get around this.  Buttons can have text of a different color typed on them.  Then the button is made into a hyperlink.

 

11)  Buttons, graphics and images can have a hyperlink attached to them.  If you bring the cursor to one of them, the arrow head turns to a hand.  If you then click on it, you are taken to the appropriate webpage.  Images with links can be confusing.  For a long time, I thought they were just nice pictures.  Sometimes there is no clue that they contain a link.  You have to test them by putting the cursor on them.

12)  Sometimes, in a word processor document, a hyperlink may not show up as colored (usually blue) and underlined.  In documents, you might want to type a URL in the middle of a sentence or line.  You might want to spot them easily.  In Word and WordPerfect (recent versions, at least), if you type them out, they will become active links as soon as you type the first space following the link.  Or, if you hit Enter immediately following the hyperlink, it will become activated.  In an email, the links may not become activated until you send the email.

If you were to have a sentence already completed and decide to revise it by typing or pasting a URL into it, you might already have the space following the URL.  The URL will not look activated.  After the URL, you must add a space.  Then, you can delete the old space (sometimes deleting the space you just added will de-activate the link).  


If you create a blank line in a document and paste a hyperlink into it, it will not be activated until you hit a space or hit Enter.

13)  Clicking on an activated hyperlink will take you to a website or webpage if your computer is connected to the internet.

14)  An activated hyperlink in an email or on a webpage will take you to a website or webpage (as long as you are online).  One in a word processor may not.  The conditions must be correct.  For example, a Microsoft Word document's hyperlink wouldn't work for me because I have Netscape set as my default browser.  Word rebelled at that.  

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Many people try to help the rest of us in a mailing list by providing us with a link to some interesting information.  

From what I said in #2 above, you now know that you can just add the http:// at the beginning of a website address and list members will be able to click on the link and be taken directly to the website from the email.  If the link which is provided lacks that, it will not be active.  In that case, you must copy and paste it into the browser's address or location window, or you can type it in.

I don't know the official name of a mail link, but let's say that you want to copy somebody's email address and send it to another person.  You go to an old email that came from the person.  In Netscape, when you click on it to try to copy it, Netscape may try to add the person to your address book.  In order to copy it instead, what I do is put the cursor on the left end of the address and press down on the left mouse button then quickly move the mouse to the right two or three characters.  The whole address becomes highlighted.  Now, you can copy it.  Trying to copy an email address was quite frustrating until I learned to do it this way.  Other people may experience the same problem, so I thought that I would mention it.

The subject of hyperlinks is complex.  I'm sure that I left out something, but I believe that enough information is presented here to be useful.

 


 

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