lecture 3: why links?

Links are what give the WWW its hypertextual dimension. (For a more detailed description of hypertext see chapter 3 of the printed course booklet.) They are a somewhat limited version of hypertext, this is true:

• they are only one-way (e.g., site A may link to site B but there is no obligation for site B to link back to site A);
• they do not automatically update (compare this with, say, cells in an Excel spreadsheet - this means that links may often be "dead" if the site at the other end moves or is deleted)
• they depend on the author putting them in, rather than the user.

But they are the closest thing to hypertext that we have and they make the WWW what it is.

There are two main ways in which links can add richness to your site. First, they can encode references to other texts. You should be familiar with this idea from other parts of your study. For instance, if you are reading an essay or article of mine and I want to refer you to, say, George Orwell's essay Politics of the English Language, you would have to go to a library and spend some time tracking it down; and the library you choose may not have a copy. (It's a brilliant piece, and anyone who writes for public consumption will benefit from reading it.)

Online, however, I can just do this: Orwell's Politics and the English Language (the link will work, and open the essay in the second browser window).

This type of link is known as an external link. Of course you do not have to always link to academic essays: you can link to any other web site, if you think it's relevant to your own.

However, a more involved use of links comes when you start thinking about using hypertext to present your information. Hypertext has more "dimensions" to it than straightforward "narrative" text. We will return to this question in two slides' time, after I've mentioned briefly how to code and style your links.