In computing Computing is usually defined as the activity of using and developing computer technology, computer hardware and software. It is the computer-specific part of information technology. Computer science is the study and the science of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer, a hyperlink is a reference Some examples are: the name Jane Doe used to identify a particular woman; a traffic sign warning of an upcoming turn-off; author-title-date information in bibliographies and footnotes, specifying complete works of other people; a wedding ring indicating a certain kind of relationship; and samples of various musical works being incorporated into a in a document to an external piece of information. The most common usage is in the Internet The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite . It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private and public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, and to browse through web pages A web page or webpage is a document or resource of information that is suitable for the World Wide Web and can be accessed through a web browser and displayed on a computer screen: some text in the current document A document is a bounded physical representation of body of information designed with the capacity (and usually intent) to communicate. A document may manifest symbolic, diagrammatic or sensory-representational information. To document (verb) is to produce a document artifact by collecting and representing information. In prototypical usage, a is highlighted so that when clicked, the browser A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content. Hyperlinks present in resources enable users to easily navigate their browsers to automatically displays another page or changes the current page to show the referenced content. The highlighted element is known as a hyperlink (or link for short) and makes a logical connection between two places in the same or different documents. Hyperlinks are the basic building block of hypertexts Hypertext is text, displayed on a computer, with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Other means of interaction may also be present, such as a bubble with text appearing when. For example, some key words in a wiki A wiki is a website that uses wiki software, allowing the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked Web pages, using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor, within the browser. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites, to power community websites, and for note taking. The collaborative encyclopedia such as Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free, web-based multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its name is a portmanteau of the words wiki and encyclopedia. Wikipedia's 13 million articles (2.9 million in the English Wikipedia) have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and almost all of its articles can are highlighted, and provide links to explanations of that words at other pages in the same wiki.

In directed links the area from which the hyperlink can be activated is called its anchor (or source anchor); its target (or destination anchor) is what the link points to, which may be another location within the same page or document, another page or document, or a specific location within another page or document. Hyperlinks can also be bidirectional; in that case both linked documents will have an anchor each, leading to the other document respectively.

Links are widely used for reference Some examples are: the name Jane Doe used to identify a particular woman; a traffic sign warning of an upcoming turn-off; author-title-date information in bibliographies and footnotes, specifying complete works of other people; a wedding ring indicating a certain kind of relationship; and samples of various musical works being incorporated into a within a hypertext Hypertext is text, displayed on a computer, with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Other means of interaction may also be present, such as a bubble with text appearing when document A document is a bounded physical representation of body of information designed with the capacity (and usually intent) to communicate. A document may manifest symbolic, diagrammatic or sensory-representational information. To document (verb) is to produce a document artifact by collecting and representing information. In prototypical usage, a in order to help the end user find the reference easily without scrolling down the page or type a URL (web address) into the location bar An address bar is a widget in a graphical user interface web browser that indicates the current or desired URL, webpage address, or path to a local file or other item currently being shown by the browser or that the user wishes to be shown. A new page can be viewed by typing its URL into the URL bar and pressing the Enter key. A similar feature is directly.

To insert a hyperlink to another place is often simply called to "link". Hypertext Hypertext is text, displayed on a computer, with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Other means of interaction may also be present, such as a bubble with text appearing when (meaning "more than just text") is a form of text typically published on websites that provides a richer functionality than simple text documents by allowing the reader to learn about topics within the article by clicking on key words. Typically the link anchor will be descriptive of the target's content, for example Wikipedia home page, but badly designed or malicious sites may use obscure links or obfuscated Obfuscation is the concealment of intended meaning in communication, making communication confusing, intentionally ambiguous, and more difficult to interpret links which make it hard to work out where the link will take you.

Types of links

Embedded link

Example: The first word of this sentence: ("Example") is a navigation link embedded in a text object – if the word is clicked, the browser will navigate to a different page.

Inline link

An inline link Inline linking is the use of a linked object, often an image, from one site into a web page belonging to a second site. The second site is said to have an inline link to the site where the object is located displays remote content without the need for embedding the content. The remote content may be accessed with or without the user selecting the link. Inline links may display specific parts of the content (e.g. thumbnail Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words. In the age of digital images, visual search engines and image-organizing programs normally use thumbnails, as do most modern operating systems or desktop environments, such as, low resolution Image resolution describes the detail an image holds. The term applies equally to digital images, film images, and other types of images. Higher resolution means more image detail preview Using Preview feature, users can preview and see the current stage of the process before producing into a final form. Preview lets users to visualize current/final product and correct possible errors easily before finalizing the product. Preview is necessary for markup language editing software like Web development applications, cropped Cropping refers to the removal of the outer parts of an image to improve framing, accentuate subject matter or change aspect ratio. Depending on the application, this may be performed on a physical photograph, artwork or film footage, or achieved digitally using image editing software. The term is common to the film, broadcasting, photographic, sections, magnified Magnification is the process of enlarging something only in appearance, not in physical size. This enlargement is quantified by a calculated number also called magnification. When this number is less than one it refers to a reduction in size, sometimes called minification or de-magnification sections, description text, etc.) and access other parts or the full content when needed, as is the case with print publishing Desktop publishing combines a personal computer and WYSIWYG page layout software to create publication documents on a computer for either large scale publishing or small scale local multifunction peripheral output and distribution software. This allows for smaller file sizes and quicker response to changes when the full linked content is not needed, as is the case when rearranging a page layout Page layout is the part of graphic design that deals in the arrangement and style treatment of elements on a page. Beginning from early illuminated pages in hand-copied books of the Middle Ages and proceeding down to intricate modern magazine and catalog layouts, proper page design has long been a consideration in printed material. With print.

Hot area

A hot area (image map In HTML and XHTML , an image map is a list of coordinates relating to a specific image, created in order to hyperlink areas of the image to various destinations . For example, a map of the world may have each country hyperlinked to further information about that country. The intention of an image map is to provide an easy way of linking various in HTML) is an invisible area of the screen that covers a text label or graphical images An image is an artifact, or has to do with a two-dimensional (a picture), that has a similar appearance to some subject—usually a physical object or a person. A technical description of a hot area is a list of coordinates relating to a specific area on a screen An electronic page is a term to encompass the grouping of content between basic breaking points in presentations or documents that originate or remain as visual electronic documents. This is a software file and recording format term in contrast to electronic paper, a hardware display technology. Electronic pages may be a standard sized based on created in order to hyperlink areas of the image to various destinations, disable linking via negative space around irregular shapes, or enable linking via invisible areas. For example, a political map of Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area. With a billion people (as of 2009, see table) in 61 territories, it accounts for about 14.8% of the World's human population may have each irregularly shaped country hyperlinked to further information about that country. A separate invisible hot area interface allows for swapping skins In computing, skins may be associated with themes as custom graphical appearances that can be applied to certain software and websites to suit its the purpose or topic, or the tastes of different users or labels within the linked hot areas without repetitive embedding of links in the various skin elements.

Random accessed

Random-accessed linking data are links retrieved from a database or variable containers in a program when the retrieval function is from user interaction (e.g. dynamic menu from an address book) or non-interactive (e.g. random, calculated) process.

Hardware accessed

A hardware-accessed link is a link that activates directly via an input device An input device is any peripheral used to provide data and control signals to an information processing system (such as a computer). Input and output devices make up the hardware interface between a computer as a scanner or 6DOF controller (e.g. keyboard, microphone, remote control) without the need or use of a graphical user interface.

Hyperlinks in various technologies

Hyperlinks in HTML

Tim Berners-Lee Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA , is an English computer scientist and MIT professor credited with inventing the World Wide Web, making the first proposal for it in March 1989. On 25 December 1990, with the help of Robert Cailliau and a young student staff at CERN, he implemented the first successful communication between saw the possibility of using hyperlinks to link any unit of information to any other unit of information over the Internet The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite . It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private and public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, and. Hyperlinks were therefore integral to the creation of the World Wide Web The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks. Using concepts from earlier hypertext systems, the World Wide Web was invented in 1989 by the English. Web pages are written in the hypertext mark-up language HTML HTML, an initialism for Hypertext Mark-up Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. It provides a means to describe the structure of text-based information in a document—by denoting certain text as links, headings, paragraphs, lists, etc.—and to supplement that text with interactive forms, embedded images, and other objects.

Links are specified in HTML using the <a> (anchor) In computing, an HTML element indicates structure in an HTML document and a way of hierarchically arranging content. More specifically, an HTML element is an SGML element that meets the requirements of one or more of the HTML Document Type Definitions . These elements have properties: both attributes and content, as specified (both allowable and elements. To see the HTML used to create a page, most browsers offer a "view page source" option. Included in the HTML code will be an expression in the form symbol "<a" and the reference "href="URL">" which marks the start of an anchor, followed by the highlighted text and the "</a>" symbol indicating the end of the source anchor. The <a> element can also be used to indicate the target of a link.

XLink: Hyperlinks in XML

The W3C The World Wide Web Consortium is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web (abbreviated WWW or W3). It is arranged as a consortium where member organizations maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the World Wide Web. As of June 2009, the W3C had 388 members Recommendation The World Wide Web Consortium is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web (abbreviated WWW or W3). It is arranged as a consortium where member organizations maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the World Wide Web. As of June 2009, the W3C had 388 members called XLink The XML Linking Language, or XLink, is an XML markup language used for creating hyperlinks in XML documents. XLink is a W3C specification that outlines methods of describing links between resources in XML documents, whether internal or external to the original document describes hyperlinks that offer a far greater degree of functionality than those offered in HTML. These extended links can be multidirectional, linking from, within, and between XML documents. It also describes simple links, which are unidirectional and therefore offer no more functionality than hyperlinks in HTML.

Hyperlinks in other technologies

Hyperlinks are used in the Gopher protocol The Gopher protocol is a TCP/IP Application layer protocol designed for distributing, searching, and retrieving documents over the internet, and was an alternative to the World Wide Web. The protocol offers some features not natively supported by the Web and imposes a much stronger hierarchy on information stored on it. Its text menu interface is, wikis A wiki is a website that uses wiki software, allowing the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked Web pages, using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor, within the browser. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites, to power community websites, and for note taking. The collaborative encyclopedia, e-mails An electronic mail message consists of two components, the message header, and the message body, which is the email's content. The message header contains control information, including, minimally, an originator's email address and one or more recipient addresses. Usually additional information is added, such as a subject header field, Text editors Text editors are often provided with operating systems or software development packages, and can be used to change configuration files and programming language source code, PDF documents Portable Document Format is a file format created by Adobe Systems in 1993 for document exchange. PDF is used for representing two-dimensional documents in a manner independent of the application software, hardware, and operating system, word processing Word processing is the creation of documents using a word processor. It can also refer to advanced shorthand techniques, sometimes used in specialized contexts with a specially modified typewriter documents A document is a bounded physical representation of body of information designed with the capacity (and usually intent) to communicate. A document may manifest symbolic, diagrammatic or sensory-representational information. To document (verb) is to produce a document artifact by collecting and representing information. In prototypical usage, a, spreadsheets A spreadsheet is a computer application that simulates a paper worksheet. It displays multiple cells that together make up a grid consisting of rows and columns, each cell containing either alphanumeric text or numeric values. A spreadsheet cell may alternatively contain a formula that defines how the contents of that cell is to be calculated from, Apple Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and manufactures consumer electronics and software products. The company's best-known hardware products include Macintosh computers, the iPod and the iPhone. Apple software includes the Mac OS X operating system, the iTunes media browser, the iLife suite of multimedia and creativity's HyperCard HyperCard is an application program created by Bill Atkinson for Apple Computer, Inc. that was among the first successful hypermedia systems before the World Wide Web. It combines database capabilities with a graphical, flexible, user-modifiable interface. HyperCard also features HyperTalk, written by Dan Winkler, a powerful and easy-to-learn and many other places.

How hyperlinks work in HTML

A link has two ends, called anchors, and a direction. The link starts at the source anchor and points to the destination anchor. A link from one domain to another is said to be outbound from its source anchor and inbound An inbound link is a hyperlink transiting domains. Links are inbound from the perspective of the link target, and conversely, outbound from the perspective of the originator. Inbound links were originally important as a primary means of web navigation; today their significance lies in search engine optimization (SEO) to its target.

The most common destination anchor is a URL In computing, a Uniform Resource Locator is a type of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that specifies where an identified resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it. In popular usage and in many technical documents and verbal discussions it is often incorrectly used as a synonym for URI. In popular language, a URL is also referred used in the World Wide Web. This can refer to a document, e.g. a webpage, or other resource, or to a position in a webpage. The latter is achieved by means of a HTML element with a "name" or "id" attribute at that position of the HTML document. The URL of the position is the URL of the webpage with "#attribute name" appended — this is a fragment identifier.

When linking to PDF documents from an HTML page the "attribute name" can be replaced with syntax that references a page number or another element of the PDF, for example page=[pageNo] - "#page=386".

Link behavior in web browsers

A web browser usually displays a hyperlink in some distinguishing way, e.g. in a different colour, font or style. The behaviour and style of links can be specified using the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) language.

In a graphical user interface, the appearance of a mouse cursor may change into a hand motif to indicate a link. In most graphical web browsers, links are displayed in underlined blue text when not cached, but underlined purple text when cached. When the user activates the link (e.g. by clicking on it with the mouse) the browser will display the target of the link. If the target is not an HTML file, depending on the file type and on the browser and its plugins, another program may be activated to open the file.

The HTML code contains some or all of the five main characteristics of a link:

• link destination ("href" pointing to a URL)
• link label
• link title
• link target
• link class or link id

It uses the HTML element "a" with the attribute "href" (HREF is an abbreviation for "Hypertext REFerence"^[1]) and optionally also the attributes "title", "target", and "class" or "id":

<a href="URL" title="link title" target="link target" class="link class">link label</a>

Example: To embed a link into a Page, blogpost, or comment, it may take this form:

<a href="http://example.com/">Example</a>

After publishing, the complex link string is reduced to the following for visualization in typical Web browsers:

Example

This contributes to a clean, easy to read text or document.

When the cursor hovers over a link, depending on the browser and/or graphical user interface, some informative text about the link can be shown:

• It pops up, not in a regular window, but in a special hover box, which disappears when the cursor is moved away (sometimes it disappears anyway after a few seconds, and reappears when the cursor is moved away and back). Mozilla Firefox, IE, Opera, and many other web browsers all show the URL.
• In addition, the URL is commonly shown in the status bar.

Normally, a link will open in the current frame or window, but sites that use frames and multiple windows for navigation can add a special "target" attribute to specify where the link will be loaded. Windows can be named upon creation, and that identifier can be used to refer to it later in the browsing session. If no current window exists with that name, a new window will be created using the ID.

Creation of new windows is probably the most common use of the "target" attribute. In order to prevent accidental reuse of a window, the special window names "_blank" and "_new" are usually available, and will always cause a new window to be created. It is especially common to see this type of link when one large website links to an external page. The intention in that case is to ensure that the person browsing is aware that there is no endorsement of the site being linked to by the site that was linked from. However, the attribute is sometimes overused and can sometimes cause many windows to be created even while browsing a single site.

Another special page name is "_top", which causes any frames in the current window to be cleared away so that browsing can continue in the full window.

History of the hyperlink

The term "hyperlink" was coined in 1965 (or possibly 1964) by Ted Nelson at the start of Project Xanadu. Nelson had been inspired by "As We May Think," a popular essay by Vannevar Bush. In the essay, Bush described a microfilm-based machine (the Memex) in which one could link any two pages of information into a "trail" of related information, and then scroll back and forth among pages in a trail as if they were on a single microfilm reel. The closest contemporary analogy would be to build a list of bookmarks to topically related Web pages and then allow the user to scroll forward and backward through the list.

In a series of books and articles published from 1964 through 1980, Nelson transposed Bush's concept of automated cross-referencing into the computer context, made it applicable to specific text strings rather than whole pages, generalized it from a local desk-sized machine to a theoretical worldwide computer network, and advocated the creation of such a network. Meanwhile, working independently, a team led by Douglas Engelbart (with Jeff Rulifson as chief programmer) was the first to implement the hyperlink concept for scrolling within a single document (1966), and soon after for connecting between paragraphs within separate documents (1968). See NLS.

Legal issues

While hyperlinking among pages of Internet content has long been considered an intrinsic feature of the Internet, some websites have claimed that linking to them is not allowed without permission.

In certain jurisdictions it is or has been held that hyperlinks are not merely references or citations, but are devices for copying web pages. In the Netherlands, for example, Karin Spaink was initially convicted of copyright infringement for linking, although this ruling was overturned in 2003. The courts that advocate it see the mere publication of a hyperlink that connects to illegal material to be an illegal act in itself, regardless of whether referencing illegal material is illegal. In 2004, Josephine Ho was acquitted of 'hyperlinks that corrupt traditional values' in Taiwan.^[2]

In 2000, British Telecom sued Prodigy claiming that Prodigy infringed its patent (U.S. Patent 4,873,662) on web hyperlinks. After litigation, a court found for Prodigy, ruling that British Telecom's patent did not cover web hyperlinks.^[3]

In United States jurisprudence, there is a distinction between the mere act of linking to someone else's website, and linking to content that is illegal or infringing.^[4] Several courts have found that merely linking to someone else's website is not copyright or trademark infringement, regardless of how much that someone else might object.^[5].^[6][7] Linking to illegal or infringing content can be sufficiently problematic to give rise to legal liability.^{[8][9][10][11][12]} For a summary of the current status of US copyright law as to hyperlinking, see this discussion.

See also

• Dead link
• HTML element
• Internal link
• Object hyperlinking
• Overlinking
• Underlinking
• Xenu's Link Sleuth — checks Web sites for broken hyperlinks

References

1. ^ Tim Berners-Lee, Making a Server ("HREF" is for "hypertext reference")
2. ^ The prosecution of Taiwan sexuality researcher and activist Josephine Ho
3. ^ CNET News.com, Hyperlink patent case fails to click. August 23, 2002.
4. ^ Cybertelecom:: Legal to Link?
5. ^ Ford Motor Company v. 2600 Enterprises, 177 F.Supp.2d 611 (EDMi December 20, 2001)
6. ^ American Civil Liberties Union v. Miller, 977 F.Supp. 1228 (ND Ga. 1997)
7. ^ Ticketmaster Corp. v. Tickets.Com, Inc., No. 99-07654 (CD Calif. March 27, 2000)
8. ^ Intellectual Reserve v. Utah Lighthouse Ministry, Inc., 75 FSupp2d 1290 (D Utah 1999)
9. ^ Universal City Studios Inc v Reimerdes, 111 FSupp2d 294 (DCNY 2000)
10. ^ Comcast of Illinoi X LLC v. Hightech Elec. Inc., District Court for the Northern District of Illinoi, Decision of July 28, 2004, 03 C 3231
11. ^ WebTVWire.com, Linking to Infringing Video is probably Illegal in the US. December 10, 2006.
12. ^ Compare Perfect 10 v. Google, Decision of February 21, 2006, Case No. CV 04-9484 AHM (CD Cal. 2/21/06), CRI 2006, 76-88 No liability for thumbnail links to infringing content

External links

• Links in HTML 4 (w3.org)
• Uniform Resource Locators (ietf.org)
• Relative Uniform Resource Locators (ietf.org)
• A Brief History of the Hyperlink
• Links & Law — Overview of legal issues and court rulings involving linking
• The Expert's Guide to Using Hyperlinks
• Hyperlink Project
• Cybertelecom:: Legal to Link?

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