- HTML Links
- Creating Links in HTML
- HTML Link Syntax
- Example
- Setting the Targets for Links
- Example
- Creating Bookmark Anchors
- Example
- HTML Links: How to create Links to other Web Pages
- Link Targets
- Jump Links
- Add an ID to the Link Target
- Create the Hyperlink
- Email Links
- Base href
- HTML Links
- HTML Links — Hyperlinks
- HTML Links — Syntax
- Example
- HTML Links — The target Attribute
- Example
- Absolute URLs vs. Relative URLs
- Example
- Absolute URLs
- Relative URLs
- HTML Links — Use an Image as a Link
- Example
- Link to an Email Address
- Example
- Button as a Link
- Example
- Link Titles
- How to make page links in HTML Page?
- Syntax
- Example
- Example
- Using an image as a Hyperlink
- Syntax
- Example
HTML Links
In this tutorial you will learn how to create links to other pages in HTML.
Creating Links in HTML
A link or hyperlink is a connection from one web resource to another. Links allow users to move seamlessly from one page to another, on any server anywhere in the world.
A link has two ends, called anchors. The link starts at the source anchor and points to the destination anchor, which may be any web resource, for example, an image, an audio or video clip, a PDF file, an HTML document or an element within the document itself, and so on.
By default, links will appear as follows in most of the browsers:
- An unvisited link is underlined and blue.
- A visited link is underlined and purple.
- An active link is underlined and red.
However, you can overwrite this using CSS. Learn more about styling links.
HTML Link Syntax
Links are specified in HTML using the tag.
A link or hyperlink could be a word, group of words, or image.
Anything between the opening tag and the closing tag becomes the part of the link that the user sees and clicks in a browser. Here are some examples of the links:
Example
The href attribute specifies the target of the link. Its value can be an absolute or relative URL.
An absolute URL is the URL that includes every part of the URL format, such as protocol, host name, and path of the document, e.g., https://www.google.com/ , https://www.example.com/form.php , etc. While, relative URLs are page-relative paths, e.g., contact.html , images/smiley.png , and so on. A relative URL never includes the http:// or https:// prefix.
Setting the Targets for Links
The target attribute tells the browser where to open the linked document. There are four defined targets, and each target name starts with an underscore( _ ) character:
- _blank — Opens the linked document in a new window or tab.
- _parent — Opens the linked document in the parent window.
- _self — Opens the linked document in the same window or tab as the source document. This is the default, hence it is not necessary to explicitly specify this value.
- _top — Opens the linked document in the full browser window.
Try out the following example to understand how the link’s target basically works:
Example
Tip: If your web page is placed inside an iframe, you can use the target=»_top» on the links to break out of the iframe and show the target page in full browser window.
Creating Bookmark Anchors
You can also create bookmark anchors to allow users to jump to a specific section of a web page. Bookmarks are especially helpful if you have a very long web page.
Creating bookmarks is a two-step process: first add the id attribute on the element where you want to jump, then use that id attribute value preceded by the hash sign ( # ) as the value of the href attribute of the tag, as shown in the following example:
Example
Jump to Section A Section A
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
HTML Links: How to create Links to other Web Pages
This article explains how to create a link from one page to another. It also outlines the different types of hyperlinks.
Links, otherwise known as , are defined using the tag — otherwise known as the element.
Hypertext references can use URLS, URLs, or URLs.
This refers to a URL where the full path is provided. For example:
This refers to a URL where the path, relative to the current location, is provided.
For example, if we want to reference the https://www.quackit.com/html/tutorial/ URL, and our current location is https://www.quackit.com/html/ , we would use this:
This refers to a URL where the path, relative to the domain’s root, is provided.
For example, if we want to reference the https://www.quackit.com/html/tutorial/ URL, and the current location is https://www.quackit.com/html/ , we could use this:
The forward slash indicates the domain’s root. No matter where your file is located, you can always use this method to specify the path, even if you don’t know what the domain name will eventually be (as long as you know the full path from the root).
Link Targets
You can nominate whether to open the URL in a new window or the current window. You do this with the target attribute. For example, target=»_blank» opens the URL in a new window.
The target attribute can have the following possible values:
_blank | Opens the URL in a new browser window. |
_self | Loads the URL in the current browser window. |
_parent | Loads the URL into the parent frame (still within the current browser window). This is only applicable when using frames. |
_top | Loads the URL in the current browser window, but cancelling out any frames. Therefore, if frames were being used, they aren’t any longer. |
Jump Links
You can make your links «jump» to other sections within the same page (or another page). These used to be called «named anchors», but they’re often referred to as jump links, bookmarks, or fragment identifiers.
Here’s how to link to the same page:
Add an ID to the Link Target
Add an ID to the part of the page that you want the user to end up. To do this, use the id attribute. The value should be some short descriptive text. The id attribute is a commonly used attribute in HTML.
Create the Hyperlink
Now create the hyperlink (that the user will click on). This is done by using the id of the link target, preceded by a hash ( # ) symbol:
So these two pieces of code are placed in different parts of the document. Something like this:
It doesn’t have to be the same page. You can use this method to jump to an ID of any page. To do this, simply add the destination URL before the hash ( # ) symbol. Example:
Of course, this assumes that there’s an ID with that value on the page.
Email Links
You can create a hyperlink to an email address. To do this, use the mailto attribute in your anchor tag.
Clicking on this link should result in your default email client opening up with the email address already filled out.
You can go a step further than this. You can auto-complete the subject line for your users, and even the body of the email. You do this appending subject and body parameters to the email address.
Base href
You can specify a default URL for all links on the page to start with. You do this by placing the base tag (in conjunction with the href attribute) in the document’s .
HTML Links
Links are found in nearly all web pages. Links allow users to click their way from page to page.
HTML Links — Hyperlinks
HTML links are hyperlinks.
You can click on a link and jump to another document.
When you move the mouse over a link, the mouse arrow will turn into a little hand.
Note: A link does not have to be text. A link can be an image or any other HTML element!
HTML Links — Syntax
The link text is the part that will be visible to the reader.
Clicking on the link text, will send the reader to the specified URL address.
Example
This example shows how to create a link to W3Schools.com:
By default, links will appear as follows in all browsers:
- An unvisited link is underlined and blue
- A visited link is underlined and purple
- An active link is underlined and red
Tip: Links can of course be styled with CSS, to get another look!
HTML Links — The target Attribute
By default, the linked page will be displayed in the current browser window. To change this, you must specify another target for the link.
The target attribute specifies where to open the linked document.
The target attribute can have one of the following values:
- _self — Default. Opens the document in the same window/tab as it was clicked
- _blank — Opens the document in a new window or tab
- _parent — Opens the document in the parent frame
- _top — Opens the document in the full body of the window
Example
Use target=»_blank» to open the linked document in a new browser window or tab:
Absolute URLs vs. Relative URLs
Both examples above are using an absolute URL (a full web address) in the href attribute.
A local link (a link to a page within the same website) is specified with a relative URL (without the «https://www» part):
Example
Absolute URLs
W3C
Relative URLs
HTML Images
CSS Tutorial
HTML Links — Use an Image as a Link
To use an image as a link, just put the tag inside the tag:
Example
Link to an Email Address
Use mailto: inside the href attribute to create a link that opens the user’s email program (to let them send a new email):
Example
Button as a Link
To use an HTML button as a link, you have to add some JavaScript code.
JavaScript allows you to specify what happens at certain events, such as a click of a button:
Example
Tip: Learn more about JavaScript in our JavaScript Tutorial.
Link Titles
The title attribute specifies extra information about an element. The information is most often shown as a tooltip text when the mouse moves over the element.
How to make page links in HTML Page?
A link is a connection from one Web page to another web page.
To create page links in an HTML page, we need to use the href attribute of the and tag. Make sure that the tag is placed with in the
… tags.The link text is visible. Clicking on the link text will navigate to the specified URL address. By default, links will appear as follows on the web page of the browser.
- An unvisited link is underlined and blue
- A visited link is underlined and purple
- An active link is underlined and red
Syntax
Following is the syntax to make a page link on the web page.
Example
Following example program to make a page link on the web document.
DOCTYPE html> html> body> h1>HTML Article on Links h1> p>a href="https://www.Google.com/">Click this to navigate to the Google home pagea>p> body> html>
Following is the output for the unvisited link. When we click on the link it will navigate us to the home page of the google search engine. Thus, the link will get visited and appear underlined and purple.
Example
In the example below, we linked the official page of tutorialspoint on the web document.
DOCTYPE html> html> head> title>HTML Linkstitle> head> body> h1>Click the link below and navigate the official page of tutorialspointh1> a href="https://www.tutorialspoint.com/index.htm">TUTORIALSPOINTa> body> html>
If we click on the link it will redirect you to the destination page. When we click on the link it will navigate us to the home page of the webpage of tutorialspoint.
Using an image as a Hyperlink
We can add an image as link and other HTML elements as a link.
Syntax
Following is the syntax to add an image as a link on the web page.
Example
Following is the example program to make an image as a link.
DOCTYPE html> html> body> h1>HTML Article on Links h1> p>a href="https://www.Google.com/">img src="https://www.tutorialspoint.com/javafx/images/javafx-mini-logo.jpg" style="width:50px;height:50px;">a>p> body> html>
Following is the output for the image as a link, clicking on the image will navigate us to the google home page.