In computing, a hyperlink (or link) is a reference to a document that the reader can directly follow. The reference points to another document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks. Such text is usually viewed with a computer. A software system for viewing and creating hypertext is a hypertext system.
A hyperlink has an "anchor", which is a location within a document from which the hyperlink can be followed; that document is known as its source document. The target of a hyperlink is the document, or location within a document, that the hyperlink leads to. The user can follow the link when its anchor is shown by activating it in some way (often, by touching it or clicking on it). Following has it the effect of displaying its target, often with its context.
The most common example of hypertext today is the World Wide Web: webpages contain hyperlinks to webpages. For example, in an online reference work such as Wikipedia, many words and terms in the text are hyperlinked to definitions of those terms. Hyperlinks are often used to implement reference mechanisms that predate the computer, such as tables of contents, footnotes, bibliographies,hyper links also have good connection indexes and glossaries.
In some hypertext systems, hyperlinks can be bidirectional: they can be followed in two directions, so both points act as anchors and as targets. More complex arrangements exist, such as many-to-many links.
The effect of following a hyperlink may vary with the hypertext system and sometimes on the link itself; for instance, on the World Wide Web, most hyperlinks cause the target document to replaces the document being displayed, but some are marked to cause the target document to open in a new window. Another possibility is transclusion, for which the link target is a document fragment that replaces the link anchor within the source document
No comments:
Post a Comment