Hyperlink – Brief Explanation

What is a Hyperlink?

A hyperlink or hyperlink is a type of element present in electronic documents (Web pages, emails, digital text documents, etc.) that refers to another different document, to a specific part of the same document, or another resource of any kind—nature, such as online searches, purchasing mechanisms, subscriptions, etc.

Therefore, hyperlinks allow users to ” jump” from one text to another, from one information source to another, following the thread of association of the user’s interests rather than a linear and successive logic as occurs in traditional culture.

These associations are fundamental in the functioning of the World Wide Web since a hyperlink, together with an access protocol to an established data network, allows you to “visit” the different resources available online, either to view or download them—the computer.

Every hyperlink has two ends: a source anchor and a destination link. The former are usually highlighted in browsers or Internet browsers (in color and underlined, like this). By selecting the point of origin, you can access a single destination, which can be of a different multimedia nature. When hyperlinks stop operating because they fail to track the promised content, they are called “broken.”

What are Hyperlinks For?

Hyperlinks allow a novel form of movement, often called the link, which consists of the association between one text and another that do not necessarily share context or tasks but are linked by some term, meaning, or reference.

It is similar to searching for a word in the dictionary: the meaning description may contain other unknown words that we would look up in the dictionary and move away from the original.

Types of Hyperlinks

There are various types of hyperlinks based on the content or action they perform and their environment:

Text hyperlink.

Those that start and lead to a digital text or a specific part of one, such as a chapter or a footnote. This allows the creation of a network of meaning between two or more reading texts.

Image hyperlink.

Similar to the previous case, it leads to a given image hosted online. This is also the case of images containing a hyperlink, which, when selected, leads to new resources, as in online advertising.

Hyperlink to Email.

Activates preset mechanisms to send an email message to a preset email address.

Hyperlink to Specific Features.

Activates preset mechanisms to perform specific computer functions, such as printing, saving, increasing font size, etc.

Hyperlinks can also be classified according to the location of the resource they invoke, as follows:

Local or internal hyperlink.

It refers to content hosted in a local directory, whether it is the same computer, the same web page, etc.

External hyperlink.

It refers, however, to content external to the system, such as a different web page.

Hyperlink Examples

Examples of hyperlinks abound on the Internet. In online encyclopedias like Wikipedia, words or phrases with additional content in a parallel entry are highlighted in color and underlined so that when you click them, the browser takes you to the corresponding content.

The same happens when we visit a commercial web page and want to contact the administrator by clicking on the hyperlink that takes us to their email box or when we’re going to advance to the section of the web page where we can make the payment.

Hyperlink in HTML

HTML is a typical programming language for web pages and digital Internet interaction. Among its numerous functions is programming hyperlinks, for which two operations are required: 1) setting the anchors or bookmarks and 2) entering the link addresses.

The descriptors for this resource, when it comes to local hyperlinks, are “name” (in new versions of HTML, it has already been eliminated) or “id,” and they are introduced as follows in the text corresponding to the destination:

<a name=”marker name”> Text associated with the marker </a>

<a id=”marker name”> Text associated with the marker </a>

The “href” command can then be used within the source text to allow jumps to named sections (with “name” or “id”). In the case of external hyperlinks, the “href” command must be used directly with the requested URL address.

For example, for a local link: <a href=“marker name”>Marker text</a>

For an external link: <a href=“URL”>Bookmark text</a>

Conclusion

In conclusion, we explain what hyperlinks are and what these elements are for on the web—types of hyperlinks and examples of use.

Also Read:

Technology
Windows
Cyberspace
Computer
Networking
Application
Artifact
Server
Computing
Hashtag