1. lecture summary
All we have done so far is format isolated pages of HTML. It is very rare, however, that you see a web page without one or more links to other pages. Presenting text and images can be done in other ways (e.g. print), but links are the one aspect of web design that is unique to it as a medium.
In this lecture we will discuss:
- the ways in which you can use links
- some information on coding and styling your links: this is brief, however, and is taken care of more by the online materials which accompany this lecture
- how to start thinking about your web site as a series of "chunks"
- how to best navigate your visitors through the chunks
- the different possible web site structures, and which is appropriate when.
Not everyone who follows this site is a student on Web Design but for those of you who are, you are also about to come to your first course work deadline (the Thursday of week 4). The final part of this lecture therefore runs through some important information about what to do and how to submit it.
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2. what are links?
A web page equates to one single HTML file. A web site is comprised of several web pages joined together by hypertext links.
A browser window always loads a complete web page, and only one at a time. Although you can have multiple browser windows open, each with a different page, you can't have two HTML files open at any one time within the same window. So when you use your mouse to click on a link, the browser "drops" the HTML file it has currently loaded, and goes and loads another one, according to the instructions contained within the link. If you use the menu on the left or the links below the heading of this slide, you can see this in action: your browser will only ever have one of these lecture "slides" loaded at any one time. As you move from slide to slide, notice also how the URL changes in the browser's location bar.
Although it is possible to use all sorts of things to actually represent a link - images, forms, buttons as well as "ordinary" text - this basic principle remains: a link is a part of an HTML file that connects to another point of "cyberspace". Usually - but not always - this new "point" is another HTML file. This feature of HTML is where the HT part of the name comes from: it's hypertext.
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