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External Links

External Links. Daniel Whetten CIT 230 Bro. Horton. What is an external link?. An external l ink is a part of a website usually written in HMTL code that links to another website or file that is not part of your website. We have seen an example of this many times already this semester.

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External Links

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  1. External Links Daniel Whetten CIT 230 Bro. Horton

  2. What is an external link? An external link is a part of a website usually written in HMTL code that links to another website or file that is not part of your website. We have seen an example of this many times already this semester. This is a perfect example of external links from lesson 4 Each one of the blue highlighted links takes you to another website so to provide you with more information.

  3. Benefits of External linking • It gives you credibility even if you are linking to a competitors site. It shows that you are confident in your product and you know that visitors will return to you after comparing. • It allows you to be of help to your visitor by sharing links to other valuable information you have found. • It allows you to build upon or expound upon the ideas of someone else while giving the link to the original article. External links can be a very valuable part of any website as long as they are relevant to the content you are sharing.

  4. Absolute path (virtual path) The path is just like a sidewalk it is a pathway that leads for one page to another. In this case it leads from the page the link is located on to the page of another website. This is also know as a virtual path. The virtual path describes the steps to follow to leave your site and go to another. This is an example found in the week 5 reading. By using http:// at the beginning you are telling the browser to leave you site and go out to the internet. w3.org is the domain name you are telling it to go to. Since there is no specific reference listed it will go to the home page. However this link tells the browser to go to w3.org find the tr folder then find the 2012 subfolder and then find the subfolder named cr-html5-20121217 since there is not a specific file named it would return the default page of that folder. Remember that you must start with the correct protocal. When linking to another webpage you will use http:// Another common protocol you may use is mailto:

  5. Link Wording We have talked about naming and wording many times already this semester. These rules also apply to link wording. The most important things to remember are: • KISS (keep it simple sweetie) if the wording of your link is to long or complicated visitors will get confused and they will not return to your site. • Make sure the wording in the link is relevant to the information you are linking to. • Do Not use click here as the wording for an external link. Make the wording something that refers to the link. • Don’t use the same wording to point to different links

  6. Title Attribute Like any HTML elements you can add a title attribute to give visitors more information about the link. Many browsers will display title information when you hover over it with a mouse cursor. Adding a title attribute also makes access easier for those that using technology assistance. This is also best practice

  7. Frames and Popups Many people and companies are afraid to have people click on an outgoing or external link and leave their site prematurely. This caused many people to start using frames and popups to keep people on their page while giving them the information they are wanting. This is an outdated practice and causes many problems. Many people click on the link and before they could see what happened a new page appears. When they click on the back arrow nothing happens. This causes frustration. It can also cause a problem fro those using screen readers. Most computers now days come equipped with pop-up blockers and most people use them when browsing the internet. If this is the case your link will be blocked. Simply put, you should avoid using them whenever possible

  8. Link Styling The link states (which later on relate to CSS pseudo-class selectors—this sounds complex but it isn’t) are: • link—“the default state.” It defines what links should look like in a certain part of the document. By default, unvisited links are colored blue and underlined. • visited—the style of a link that was already visited before (and might already be in the browser cache). By default, already visited links are colored purple and underlined. • hover—the style of a link while the mouse cursor is hovering over it. • focus—the style of a link when tabbing to it using the keyboard. • active—the style of the link while it is activated, (ie... while the connection to the other site is in progress; it is also the style of the last activated link when you arrive at the document by going back in your browser. This information is taken from the “HTML Links” reading from lesson 5

  9. Summary External links are an important part of any website they allow you to share information and direct visitors to where they can find more information. When using them make sure you: • Understand the absolute path to get your visitor where you want them to go • Use title attributes following best practices • Avoid Frames and pop ups • And follow the proper guidelines for the wording of your links

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