What s Linkable?

What's Linkable?

A link can point to any resource that can be expressed in a URL or to local files (files residing on the same server as the page containing the link). That includes not only remote Web pages and other pages and files residing on the same Web server as your document, but also newsgroups and articles within them, email messages, and FTP servers. In your travels on the Web, you've already encountered links pointing to all these types of resources.

A link can point to a specific location within a Web page ”even to a specific location within the same page containing the link. For example, in a long Web page, each entry in a table of contents can be a link pointing to a specific section of the page (see Figure 23.2). This concept allows visitors to navigate quickly and easily within the page. The spots within pages to which a link can point are anchors .

Figure 23.2. A menu (table of contents) made up of links to pages within the same document or site.

To create a link, you use the same procedure regardless of the type of resource to which the link points. However, for each type of resource, you must consider certain issues when composing the URL for the link. The next several sections describe in detail the special considerations for each type of URL.