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Linking it all together

We gave an example above of an image that can be stored on a different server from the text page that it is to be embedded in - this is an example of a hyper-link. Hyper links are what turn the Web from a not terribly good text formatting system to the tangled Web of information that make the World Wide Web interesting. They're both the mechanism by which you find things, and the way of tying multiple media or data from multiple sources together.

The example we gave above was for an embedded image, and will be downloaded automatically gif. However, in most cases you only want the hyper link to be followed when the user clicks on it.

An example is:

    Pictures of 
    <A HREF=http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/people/mhandley.html>Mark</A> 
    and 
    <A HREF=http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/people/jon.html>Jon</A> are 
    available for those with a strong stomach.
This will be displayed as:
Pictures of Mark and Jon are available for those with a strong stomach.

If now click on Mark, or on Jon you will be presented with a glorious full colour picture of one of the authors. gif

The <A>..</A> in the text above denote an anchor - in other words some additional information that has been associated with the text. In the case the anchor has a hypertext reference denoted by the keyword HREF and the URL corresponding to that reference. Other information can also be associated with an anchor - see later.



Jon Crowcroft
Wed May 10 11:46:29 BST 1995