• A stands for Anchor. It begins the link to another page.
• HREF stands for Hypertext REFerence. That's a nice, short way of saying to the browser, "This is where the link is going to go."
• http://www.thehtmlsource.com is the FULL ADDRESS of the link. Also notice that the address has an equal sign in front of it and is enclosed in quotes. Why? Because it's an attribute of the Anchor flag, a command inside of a command. Remember that from Lesson #3?
• Where it reads "Click Here For TheHTMLSource.com" is where you write the text you want to appear on the page. What is in that space will appear on the page for the viewer to click. So, write something that denotes the link.
• /A ends the entire link command.

Here's what will appear on the page using the command above...

Now, without clicking, simply lay your pointer on the blue words. You'll see the address of the link you created come up along the bottom of the browser window, down where it usually reads "Document Done".

What To Write For The Link?

There are a couple different schools of thought on this. One suggests that what you write for links should be quite blatant. This includes text like "Click here for this" or "Here's a link to...". The other states that since the hypertext links will be blue (or whatever color they're set to), that the links should be just another word in the text set up as a link.

I believe a little of both. I'm of the opinion your readers should be allowed to have a very easy time of it all in terms of navigating your Web pages. But it's your page and you make that decision.

E-Mail Links From Your Page

This is what's known as a mailto: command. It follows the same coding scheme as the hypertext link above. What this format does is place blue wording on the screen that people can click to send you a piece of e-mail.

Here's the pattern:

<A HREF="mailto:webmaster@thehtmlsource.com">Click Here To Write Me</A>

Notice it's the same format as a link except in a link you write "mailto:" in place of the http:// and your e-mail address in place of the page address. Yes, you still need the </A> flag at the end. Please notice there is NO SPACE between the colon and the e-mail address.

Here's what you get using the "mailto:" command above:

Go ahead, click on it. I know you're dying to. You'll get an e-mail dialogue box addressed to me. Then you can write if you want. The same thing will work for you. Just place your e-mail address in place of mine following the format above.

And that wraps up Lesson #4. Next time we get into the fun part of the World Wide Web, images.