What is a hyperlink? Concept, Types, Uses and Examples

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  1. What is a hyperlink?
    1. What are hyperlinks for?
  2. Types of hyperlink
    1. Text hyperlink
    2. Image hyperlink
    3. Hyperlink to e-mail
    4. Hyperlink to specific functions
    5. Hyperlink in html
    6. Hypertext: Concept, Characteristics and Uses
    7. What is a hypertext?
    8. Characteristics of a hypertext
    9. Uses of hypertext
    10. What is the World Wide Web (WWW)?
    11. How does the World Wide Web work?
    12. Features of the World Wide Web
    13. Importance of the World Wide Web
  3. You may be interested:

We explain what hyperlinks are and what these elements are used for on the web. Types of hyperlinks and examples of use.

What is a hyperlink

Hyperlinks give the possibility to "jump" from one text to another.

A hyperlink is a type of element present in electronic documents (web pages, e-mails, digital text documents, etc.). That refers to a different document, a specific part of the same document or another resource of any nature. Such as online searches, purchase mechanisms, subscriptions, etc.

Hyperlinks therefore consist of the possibility of "jumping" from one text to another, from one information to another, following the thread of association of user interests, rather than a linear and successive logic as occurs in traditional culture.

Such partnerships are fundamental to the functioning of the World Wide Web, since a hyperlink. Together with a protocol for access to an established data network, makes it possible to "visit" the various resources available online. Either to view them or to download them to a computer.

Every hyperlink has two extremes: an anchor of origin and a link of destination. The former are usually highlighted in browsers or Internet browsers (in color and underlined, so).

Selecting the point of origin gives access to a single destination, which may be of a different multimedia nature. When hyperlinks cease to operate, because they fail to track promised content, they are told they are "broken.

Hyperlinks allow a novel form of movement, often referred to as the link, consisting of the association between one text and another that does not necessarily share context or tasks, but is chained to each other by some term, sense or reference.

It is similar to searching for a word in the dictionary: the description of the meaning may contain other unknown words that we would in turn search in the dictionary and so on, moving away from the original.

There are several types of hyperlink, based on the content or action they perform and their environment:

Those that depart and/or lead to a digital text, or to a specific part of one, such as a chapter or footnote. This allows the creation of a meaning network between two or more reading texts.

Similar to the previous case, but leads to a certain image and hosted online. It is also the case of images that contain a hyperlink, and when selected lead to new resources, as in online advertising.

Activates the preset mechanisms for sending an e-mail message to a preset e-mail address.

Activates preset mechanisms to perform specific functions on the computer, such as printing, saving, increasing font size, etc.

Hyperlinks can also be classified according to the location of the resource they invoke, as follows:

  1. Local or internal hyperlink. It refers to content hosted in a local directory, either the same computer, the same website, etc..
  2. External hyperlink. On the other hand, it refers to contents external to the system, such as a different web page.
  3. Examples of hyperlink

When you click on a hyperlink the browser will take you to the corresponding content.

Examples of hyperlinks abound in the network. In online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia, for example, words or phrases that have additional content in a parallel entry are highlighted in color and underlined, so that clicking on them the browser leads us to the corresponding content.

The same thing happens when we visit a commercial website and want to contact the administrator. Clicking on the hyperlink that leads to your email box, or if we simply want to move to the section of the website where we can make the payment.

Html is a programming language typical of Web pages and the digital interaction of the Internet.

Among its many functions is that of programming hyperlinks, for which two operations are required: 1) establish the anchors or markers, and 2) enter the addresses of the links.

The descriptors for this resource, when it comes to local hyperlinks, are those of "name" (in new versions of html has already been removed) or "id", and are introduced as follows in the text corresponding to the destination:

<a name="marker name"> Text associated with the marker </a>

<a id="marker name"> Text associated with the marker </a>

You can then use the "href" command within the source text to allow jumps to named sections (with "name" or "id"). In the case of external hyperlinks, then the command "href" must be used directly with the requested URL address.

For example, for a local link:

<a href="marker name">Marker text </a>

For an external link:

<a href="URL address">Bookmark text </a>

Hypertext: Concept, Characteristics and Uses

We explain to you what is hypertext in computing and what is its importance in Internet. Characteristics and uses of hypertext.

Hypertext works in a way similar to human thought.

What is a hypertext?

The hypertext in computer science is a tool for creating, linking and distributing information from various sources, which operates on the basis of a structure not sequential but associative, ie non-linear, direct, but leads from one thing to another, very much in the way of human thought.

This is done through associative links called hyperlinks or cross-references, which lead from a main document to other secondary documents in which it is possible to retrieve supplementary or complementary information.

This dynamic is called a link, and it is fundamental in the use of the Internet.

The hypertext, despite its name, is not limited to written or textual information, but can link to images, sounds, audiovisual documents, entire Web pages or any other form of digital action (send an e-mail, download a file, etc.). The coexistence of this type of format is usually called hypermedia.

Hypertext documents must be opened and read with a browser (also "visualizer" or "client"), which is computer software designed for this purpose, and the action of jumping from one hypertext to others available on the Web is called surfing the Internet.

Characteristics of a hypertext

Hypertexts are characterized by being:

  1. Multimedia. As we said before, they are not limited to written text, but they can link to images, sounds, videos, etc.
  2. Digital. Hypertext is typical of digital and cybernetic dynamics, it is untranslatable to paper or other media, although human memory seems to work in a similar way.
  3. Connective. Every hypertext leads to some part of the Web, except in cases where the link has been broken (missing files, pages no longer available, etc.).
  4. Interactive. Hypertexts require user action (usually, in operating systems such as Windows, a mouse click or mouse) to operate, they are not triggered automatically.
  5. Reusable. The same hypertext can be used infinite times.
  6. Extensible. Hypertext prolongs the reading experience with other documents and extends the scope of the information available to the user.
  7. Transients. Since hypertexts are basically links, their validity depends on whether the destination they lead to is available. Hyperlinks whose destination is not available are known as "fallen" or "broken.

Uses of hypertext

Broadly speaking, hypertext is for:

Provide readers with reference material, such as supporting documents, added information, clarifying a concept, etc. This information can be both general and specific.

Fragment the reading material, allowing the user to get to the point of the information requested by the user but leaving the door open so that, if he so wishes, he can access more relevant information or the rest of the document he started reading (previews).

What is the World Wide Web (WWW)?

The World Wide Web (abbreviated WWW) in computing is a worldwide network, consisting of a complex system of interconnected hypertexts and hypermedia that can be accessed through an Internet connection and a set of specialized software.

The software necessary to visit the WWW is a browser, such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, etc., which represents in a series of windows equipped with text and multimedia each web page visited.

The latter usually require an html address (HyperText Markup Language) starting with the acronym www.

The World Wide Web, commonly referred to as "the Web" or "the Network", was developed between 1889 and 1990 by scientists at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Geneva, Switzerland, and was published in 1993.

Since then, this new virtual space has grown and multiplied to become the main means of consulting digital information and telecommunications in the contemporary world.

How does the World Wide Web work?

The Web operates on the basis of a procedure of three major steps, which are:

  • Translation The URL (the one entered in the browser) is linked to an IP address through a large distributed Internet  (called DNS). Once the IP address has been obtained, the communication between the user and the web server is established and the data transmission begins.
  • HTML request. The browser then requests the resource and retrieves the parts of the web page from the resources requested for graphics, text, etc.
  • Rendering. The browser then follows the html or ccs code instructions to assemble the web page correctly, putting each graphic on its site and each text as it should look. The user can then see it on the screen and can, if desired, jump to other similar ones.

Features of the World Wide Web

It was estimated in 2002 that out of 2,024 million web pages 56.4% were English.

The Web is a dimension of information exchange and multimedia telecommunications, interactive and distance, which largely reflect the knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of human beings.

Statistically, it was estimated in 2002 that out of 2,024 million existing web pages, 56.4% were in English, compared to 7.7% in German, 5.6% in French and 4.95% in Japanese, followed by 4% in Spanish.

Many accuse this predominance of the Anglo language of serving as a mechanism for the imposition of (American) language and culture in the rest of the world, thus operating as an imperialist agent at the heart of computer globalization.

However, other studies accuse the tendency towards the constitution rather of a 2.0 culture, that is, a culture proper to digital media that would transcend the traditional limits imposed by borders and cultures.

Importance of the World Wide Web

The appearance of the Web changed the world forever. It allowed new and diverse forms of remote access to information, thus changing the way we investigate and overcoming enormous distances to enable communication.

The sending of confidential information, the promotion and even sale of products, the incorporation of the user to social (social networks) and recreational communities, in short, a gigantic variety of activities are available to the human being of today thanks to this new computer space.

Of course, this has also had careful repercussions, such as a new dimension of crime (computer crimes or cybercrime), unrestricted user access to all types of information: legal or illegal, sensitive or public, intimate or informative, which is a challenge when filtering and going to reliable sources, or protecting children from information overexposure.

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