The next thing we should cover is hyper links, also known text links. These will be what we use to link all of our documents together and thus create a web site. The hyper links will be a vital part to the creation and effectiveness of our web site, so we need to make sure they are setup correctly and function properly. There are a few different things we can use hyper links for and we'll go over the major ones so we all know the versatility of them.

The first thing we must learn is how to properly setup and code a hyper link. There are two parts to a hyper link, the first part let's the browser know that the line of code is something active, hence the use of and A as the opening tag; then we'll need to let the browser know what type of activity it is, in this case it's a hyper link or HTTP link. So in the case of a hyper link, we'll use "HREF" to ensure that the browser phrases the line of code as a hyper link. Let's take a look at a few examples of correct syntax.

Code Example

<A HREF="http://www.testlink.com/">Text Link Name</A>

Output Example
Text Link Name

Text links aren't very hard to setup correctly and can be used as much as needed or wanted. Be sure to properly close any hyper link opened, or the rest of the document after the opening of the hyper link will become one larger link, which isn't very astatically pleasing.

Now that we understand how a hyper link is setup, let's learn a few different tasks that utilize the same line of code, or very close variations. The first one we'll take a look at are e-mail links, which are setup the exact same way as a hyper link, but utilize an extra command to open up the users default email clink if clicked.

Let's first take a look at and a simple e-mail link, then we'll take a look at how we can add a default title to the e-mail when a user clicks on the e-mail link.

Code Example

<A HREF="mailto:email@address.com">E-Mail Address</A>

Output Example
E-Mail Address

If the above link is clicked, the default email client for each visitor will load and they will then be able to email the e-mail address used within the link above, notice how it puts the email address in the "send to" box automatically? This is a great way for visitors of our site to contact us later on.

Now we know how to setup email links, let's take a look at one other useful option that can be used along side email links to add a title within our email. This is done simply by adding extra code after the email address.

Code Example

<A HREF="mailto:email@address.com?subject=E-Mail Title&rdquo">E-Mail Address

Output Example
E-Mail Address

Notice the extra code we used? All we added was a question mark and the tag subject then our title. This will then tell the e-mail client to use the title we assigned to it when opening the e-mail client, this is a great way to make contact e-mails or other static e-mails that need certain titles.