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THE WORLD WIDE WEB - THE BASICS

More about links

You've just followed a link, and you're now looking at a new page. Jumping from one page to the next is as simple as that.

There can be any number of links on a page and they can appear anywhere on the page. They can be embedded in text, or

on a new line,

they can be big, small, bold or CAPITALS,

but they will normally be highlighted with a colour in some way, and as you move your mouse pointer over them it will turn from an arrow into a hand.

Links which are text will very often be underlined as well, but not always. Most links within the WebWise site are not underlined. Hey, it's a style thing.

Links can also be embedded in an image, rather than text - more on this later.

Visited links

To help you see where you've been before, links often change colour after you've followed them. These are known as 'visited links'. They normally turn from blue to red or green but they can vary from one website to another. You can also alter the settings or 'options' on your web browser to specify preferred colours for visited and unvisited links.

The only problem is that the links change colour if the computer has been there before, so if someone else has used your computer, the links will be shown as 'visited' already, but this doesn't prevent you from 'visiting' again.

Images as links

Images (such as graphics or photographs) can also be links. Sometimes these have borders which match the colour of text links, but they don't always. Again, the way to tell if an image is a link is to move your mouse pointer over it. If it is a link the pointer will turn from an arrow into a hand.

Note

Whether a link is text or an image, you should only ever use a single click of the mouse to follow the link, even if it's taking some time to load the new page.

You'll be used to double-clicking on icons to open up programs from your desktop for example, so single-clicking may take some getting used to. But it is important, because a double click on a web link will interrupt the current download and make it start over again, or even take you to a different page, as it will load one and then click straight through to another. So be patient, the internet is not as instant as TV (well not yet anyway).

Why links?

Links, those clickable words or pictures, are one of the reasons the World Wide Web is so popular and so useful.

Links take you from a page or file (a webpage, an email message etc) to somewhere else (another page, a picture etc.) Think of them like turning the pages of a multimedia scrapbook with millions of pages - you could find a letter, a CD, a poem, a 78 rpm record or even a ticket for a film.

Many links do consist of one webpage after another, but more interesting is when you, say, go from a view of Paris by night to a guided trip round the Louvre to an audio interview with Picasso, to a list of the 100 most exciting museums in the world.

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