Anchors: Creating Links

Anchor tags, denoted by <A>, are used in two completely different ways:

• Reference Anchors. These create a link to somewhere else. These are what we have been calling "hypertext links". We are going to concentrate mostly on this type of anchor.
• Named Anchors. These are more like placemarks or placeholders. They indicate a specific place within a document. Rather than linking to somewhere else, they create a place that can be linked to from somewhere else (using a reference anchor).

Anchor tags are paired.

Reference Anchors

<A HREF="xxxxxxx"> yyyyyyy </A>

where the xxxxxxx part is the URL for the location being linked to, and the yyyyyyy part is the item that is being marked as a link.

The link item can be either text or a graphic. If it is text, it will initially appear in Netscape as blue and underlined. If it is a graphic, it will initially appear boxed with a blue border. (The link color may be changed by a browser Preferences option, and it may also change, if the Preference settings permit it to do so, after it has been visited -- this color is normally purple, but that, too, can be changed by a Preferences option.)

Links in Mosaic appear very much like links in Netscape. The same is true of other graphical browsers, such as WinWeb or MacWeb. To follow a link, the reader clicks on the item with the mouse. In Lynx, however, a link item appears highlighted (bright white on black rather than just white on black -- the effect is much like boldface). The current item is highlighted in reverse (black on white). To follow the current link, the reader presses the right arrow key. (Because of these differences, your link--if it is text--should probably not say something like "click on this," because that may not be what the reader should actually do.)

The following examples illustrate both textual and graphical reference anchors.

• Text Anchors

• ...by any other name...

As another example, the buttons below are just images used as link items.