Hyperlinks

Netscape Composer Tutorial
Hyperlinks

This section discusses the creation of Hyperlinks, which provide pathways to other pages and sites.

Quick Links:

	Working with Hyperlinks
	About URLs
	Creating Links
	Link Properties dialog
	Linking Images
	Linking to Targets
	Relative and Absolute Links

Working with Hyperlinks

A hyperlink is an active part of a document. When you click a hyperlink, you can link to

	Parts of the same Web page.
	Files on your computer.
	Computers on the Internet.

Hypertext and hyperlink documents are commonplace in computing now. Consider the MS Windows, Macintosh, and OS/2 Help systems, for example. Help typically displays highlighted areas that you can click to access additional information. This other information might be contained elsewhere in the same file or in another help file on your computer. On the Web, hyperlinks access information on your own computer, and potentially on any accessible computer on the Internet. The information you access, stored in computer files, can produce words, sounds, pictures, or even action video on your own computer.

About URLs

Uniform Resource Locators or URLs are street addresses for bits of information on the Internet. Most of the time, you can avoid trying to figure out your own URLs by simply navigating to the information you want to point to with your browser, and then copying and pasting the long string of "stuff" into your link. But it's often useful to understand what a URL is all about, and why it has to be so long and complex. Also, when you begin publishing your own information on the Web, you'll want to know something about URLs so that you can tell people how to find your Web page.

Most URLs have four parts: the protocol, the host name, the directory, and the file name; for example:

http://mysystem.com/docs/index.htm

The protocol (http:) is how the document is accessed; that is, the type of protocol or program your browser will use to get the file. If the browser is using HTTP to get to the file, the protocol part is http. If the browser uses FTP, it's ftp.

The host name (mysystem.com) is the system on the Internet where the information is stored, such as home.netscape.com. You can have the same host name but have different URLs with different protocols, for example:

http://mysystem.com

ftp://mysystem.com

gopher://mysystem.com

This is the same machine, but with three different information servers. As long as all three are installed on that system and available, there's no problem having the same host name.

The directory (/docs) is the location of the file or other form of information on the host. The directory might be the actual directory and file name, or it can be another indicator that the protocol uses to refer to the location of that information.

The file name (index.html) is the .HTML file for the Web page.

Creating Links

To create links in your page to other documents.

Summary

Select the text or image you want to create a link for.
Choose Insert|Link or click the Link button on the Composition Tools toolbar
Enter the file name or URL to link to.

Tip: To create a link to a page displayed in the browser, drag the link icon from the browse window (left of the location box) to an edit window.

When you link to a local document, you're linking to a document on your computer; documents you reference don't have to be in the same directory (it's a good idea though). Linking to a remote document means you're linking to somewhere on the Internet rather than on your local disk.

Details

You can create links in your documents by dragging them from other windows and then dropping them into the edit window. For example, you can drag a link from a browse, bookmark, mail, or news window and drop it on a document in the Composer window. You can also create links using the Link Properties dialog.

Select the text or image you want to create the link for.
Choose Insert|Link or click the Link button on the Composition Tools toolbar. You'll see the Link Properties dialog.
Link Source displays the selected text you want to use to create a link. To change this text, select the text in your document and retype. To see the change reflected in the dialog, select the text before opening the dialog. Note: If you don't have any text selected when inserting a new link, the title of the document to which you're linking appears in your document as the link text.
Type the local file name or remote URL to link to the selected text. Click Browse File to select a local file.
Select a named target present in the current document or selected file (depending on how you've set the "Show targets in" option). Select a target to which you want to link the selected text. The Show targets in option lets you specify displaying either the named targets in the current document or those in the file specified in the Link to page or file box.
Click Apply to make the changes you've specified and leave the dialog box open. Click OK to make the specified changes and close the dialog box.

Link Properties dialog

About the Link Properties dialog

Lets you insert a new link or modify an existing link's properties. Click OK to make the specified changes and close the dialog box. Click Apply to preview the changes you've specified and then click Close to accept the changes and exit the dialog box.

Link.gif (7545 bytes)

Link source - Displays the selected text or image you want to use to create a link. To change linked text, select the text in your document and retype it. To see the change reflected in the dialog, select the text before opening the dialog. Note: If you don't have any text selected when inserting a new link, the title of the document to which you're linking appears in your document as the link text.

Link to page or file - The local file name or remote URL to which you want the selected text to link. Type a URL or click Browse File to select a file.

Choose File - Lets you select an HTML file to link to

Remove Link - Unlinks the selected linked text. The Link to page or file box is cleared. If the current selection contains more than one link, an alert box appears asking you if you want to remove all links.

Select a named target - The named targets present in the current document or selected file (depending on how you've set the "Show targets in" option). Select a target to which you want to link the selected text. Targets are also known as "anchors" or "bookmarks".

Show targets in - Lets you specify to display either the named targets in the current local document or those in the local file specified in the Link to page or file box.

Linking Images

Summary

Insert an image
Click the Link button on the Composition Tools toolbar
Specify a link location.

Details

Just as with text, you can configure images to behave as links in your documents. When you click a linked image, the browse window displays the page that the image is linked to.

Insert an image on your page.
Select the image and then choose the Link button on the Composition Tools toolbar. You see the Link properties dialog box.
Specify a link location.
Select File|Browse Page and then click on the image to go to the linked page.

Linking to Targets

If you want to link to a specific place within a document rather than just linking to the document itself, you create a target (also called anchor or bookmark in HTML). You can do this by inserting a target in one document, and then creating a link in the same document, or another document that points to that target. When you click on the link in the browser, the browser opens the document containing the target and scrolls to the target location. For example, the seven links at the top of this page link to the orange topic headings throughout the page. These headings have been defined as targets. This makes it easier for you to jump to a specific location on the page.

Place the cursor at the beginning of a line for which you want to create a target, or select some text at the beginning of a line.
Choose Insert|Target or click the Target button on the Character Properties toolbar.
Type a name for the target in the edit box; it can be up to 30 characters long. This name will appear in the target list of the Link Properties dialog. If you selected some text in step one, this box will already contain a default target name.
Click OK. A special Target icon appears in your document (only visible in edit mode) to mark the location of the link.
Insert a link and have it point to the target.
Choose File|Browse Page and click the link you just created to go to the location marked by the selected target.

Relative and Absolute Links

When you specify the path name of a file to be linked to as a single file name, Navigator looks for the listed file in the current directory (same directory as the current file), even if it is looking at that file over a network. This is a relative path name. Relative path names point to the document you want to link to by describing its relation to the current document.

Relative path names

Path name	Means
link.htm	link.htm is located in the current directory.
files/link.htm	link.htm is located in the directory (or folder) called files and the files directory is located in the current directory.
docs/files/link.htm	link.htm is located in the files directory, which is located in the docs directory, which is located in the current directory.
../link.htm	link.htm is located in the directory (or folder) above the current directory (the same directory the current directory is in). You can use multiple "../" to indicate a file location further up the directory structure.

Absolute path names point to the document by starting at the top level of your directory hierarchy and working down through all the subdirectories to reach the file. You should use absolute path names when linking to a page from another Web site, such as the Netscape site.

Note: Check both publish options in the Composer Preferences dialog to take care of this automatically.

Generally, when linking together your own documents, you'll want to use relative path names. If you specify your links as absolute path names and then move your files elsewhere on the disk, rename a directory or a disk listed in that absolute path, or publish your pages to a server, then your links to these files might not work.

Absolute path names or URLs

Path name or URL	Means
/docs/test/link.htm	link.htm is located in the directory /docs/test.
/C\|/docs/html/link.htm	link.htm is located on the C: drive in the directory docs/htm.
http://netscape.com/link.htm	link.htm is located on the Netscape Web server.

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