About hyperlinks

A hyperlink is a link from one web page or file to another. When a site visitor clicks the hyperlink, the destination is displayed in a Web browser, opened, or run, depending on the type of destination. The destination is frequently another web page, but it can also be a picture, a multimedia file, a Microsoft Office document, an e-mail address, or a program.

For example, a hyperlink to a page displays the page in the Web browser, and a hyperlink to an .avi file opens the file in a media player.

How hyperlinks are used

Navigate to a file or web page on a network, intranet, or Internet
Navigate to a file or web page that you plan to create in the future
Send an e-mail message
Start a file transfer, such as downloading a file or sending a file by FTP
Go to a bookmark

When the site visitor points to text or a picture that contains a hyperlink, the pointer becomes a hand Pointer in the shape of a hand

, indicating that the item can be clicked.

When you edit a page, you can follow a hyperlink to open the destination page or file. For example, after you create a hyperlink, follow it to verify that it goes to the destination you intended.

Microsoft FrontPage follows the hyperlink differently, depending on the destination:

The destination is a web page FrontPage opens the page for editing in Page view.
The destination is a bookmark FrontPage opens the page and scrolls down to the bookmark.
The destination is a file FrontPage opens the file in its associated editor. For example, FrontPage opens a text file in Notepad.
The destination is not in the current web FrontPage opens a copy of the destination page or file.

How URLs work

When you create a hyperlink, its destination is encoded as a Uniform Resource Locator (URL).
A URL contains a web server or network location, path, and file name. A URL also identifies the protocol that will handle the file, such as HTTP or FTP, as shown in the following illustration:

The parts of a Uniform Resource Locator (URL)

Protocol

Web server

Path

File name

Absolute and relative URLS

An absolute URL contains a full address, including the protocol, the web server, the path, and the file name.
A relative URL has one or more missing parts. The missing information is taken from the page that contains the URL. For example, if the protocol and web server are missing, the Web browser uses the protocol and domain, such as .com, .org, or .edu, of the current page.

It is common for pages in a web to use relative URLs that contain only a partial path and file name. If the files are moved to another server, any hyperlinks will continue to work as long as the relative positions of the pages remain unchanged. For example, a hyperlink on Products.htm points to a page named Apple.htm in a folder named Food; if both pages are moved to a folder named Food on a different server, the URL in the hyperlink will still be correct.

Using text versus pictures

A hyperlink can be text or a picture.

A text hyperlink is a word or phrase that has been assigned a destination URL.

A picture hyperlink is a picture that has been assigned a destination URL in one of two ways:

The entire picture can be assigned a default hyperlink. In this case, the site visitor can click any part of the picture to display its destination. For example, a button is a picture with a default hyperlink.
The picture can be assigned one or more hotspots, which are hyperlink regions on the picture. A picture that contains hotspots is called an image map. For example, an image map can be a picture that represents different parts of a web site (such as the home page, a catalog page, and so on). The site visitor clicks a certain area of the image map to display the corresponding page.
For more information about image maps and hotspots, please see "About images."

How hyperlinks are shown

Hyperlinks can be indicated in various ways. Web browsers usually underline text hyperlinks and display them in a different color. For example, this is how a hyperlink might look.

Hyperlinks on a picture are not always visible. However, a site visitor can tell that a picture has a hyperlink by positioning the mouse pointer over it. The mouse pointer changes appearance, usually to a pointing hand Pointer in the shape of a hand . For example, position your mouse pointer over the following button:

To emphasize a hyperlink even more, you can also add Dynamic HTML effects or animation to hyperlinks, as shown in the following illustration:.

A hyperlink should also provide a visual cue about where it leads; for example, the hyperlinks below could be used to lead to a web's home page:

Home Page

Setting colors for hyperlinks

You can choose the colors that a Web browser will use for displaying hyperlinks. You can select three colors to use for a hyperlink, depending on its status:

Hyperlink — a hyperlink that has not been selected
Active hyperlink — a hyperlink that is currently selected
Visited hyperlink — a hyperlink that has already been followed

Web browsers determine whether a hyperlink has been visited already according to a specified time period. For example, in Microsoft Internet Explorer, this time period is the Web browser history; you specify how long to keep a history of the pages you have visited, such as 20 days. If you have visited the page within 20 days, the hyperlink will be displayed as a visited hyperlink. If you have not visited the page in 20 days, or if you clear the history, the hyperlink will appear as if it were never selected.

Using bookmarks

A bookmark is a location or selected text on a page that you have marked.

You can use bookmarks as a destination for a hyperlink. For example, if you want to display a certain section of a page to the site visitor, add a hyperlink with the bookmark as its destination. When the site visitor clicks the hyperlink, the relevant part of the page is displayed rather than the top of the page.

You can also use one or more bookmarks to find locations on a page. For example, add a bookmark to each main heading on a page. When you are editing the page, you can quickly find each section by going to the corresponding bookmark.

If a location (rather than text) is bookmarked, the bookmark is indicated by Bookmark icon . If text is bookmarked, the text is displayed with a dashed underline.

Managing Hyperlinks

Renaming and moving files in your web

When you rename a file in your web site, Microsoft FrontPage checks to see whether there are any hyperlinks to the file. If there are, FrontPage updates the hyperlinks with the new file name. When you move a file in your web site (for example, to a folder or subfolder), FrontPage automatically updates any hyperlinks to that file with its new location.

Testing and repairing broken hyperlinks

Before you publish a web site, you should always check for broken hyperlinks and test hyperlinks to external destinations. A broken hyperlink is one that has an invalid destination URL — when the site visitor clicks the hyperlink, the Web browser displays an error message. The cause might be as simple as a mistyped URL or a URL that points to a page that you deleted from your web. If the destination is another page on the World Wide Web, the page might have been moved or deleted.

For more information about managing the hyperlinks for your whole web site, see "About managing hyperlinks."