--- title: HTML: links slug: html-links published_at: 2020-07-16 23:57:43 +0000 updated_at: 2026-03-04 20:14:53 +0000 summary: description: tags: [] views: 469 author: CJ Avilla url: https://www.cjav.dev/videos/html-links youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUBOzpbb8Mc youtube_id: jUBOzpbb8Mc embed_url: https://www.youtube.com/embed/jUBOzpbb8Mc thumbnail_url: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jUBOzpbb8Mc/hqdefault.jpg type: video --- # HTML: links *Published: July 16, 2020* *Views: 469* ## Watch [Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUBOzpbb8Mc) [![HTML: links](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jUBOzpbb8Mc/hqdefault.jpg)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUBOzpbb8Mc) ## Description ## Transcript [Music] all right let's learn how to connect to different documents by linking between them so this was like part of Tim berners-lee the guy who invented the world wide web this was like part of the the crux of the problem was how do you link different documents to each other so we want to add a new element called a link tag and the way this works is it starts with a and then it has an attribute again we talked about attributes earlier with images the attribute here is called href and the H or the value of the href is where the link will go so now we have an opening tag that is going to have an attribute and then we have a closing tag and in between those is the content that will show as the the text for the link so if we if here we say like go to page 1 and save it then the value in here is where we want the link to go when we click on it so if we refresh the page right now we don't have a value for the href so when we click on page 1 it's not actually going to do anything it just kind of like refreshes this same page so if we wanted this to go to google.com and say HTTP is google.com and save and refresh the page we click on go to page 1 and it brings us to google.com ok we could also have that open in a new tab in the browser so we can do that by saying target equals underscore blank and save or refresh and now when we click on the link it opens in a new tab so we didn't we didn't lose our original tab by navigating away we just navigated to we opened that link in a new tab this is a couple different controls here around linking but yeah let's let's connect two pages locally so we want to create a second page so we'll say file new file let's actually call it page two so we'll say we want HTML oh yeah we want to save it as maybe page two HTML ok and we need our head and we need a body and in our body we might just say h1 this is page 2 I have a P tag that says welcome to page 2 and we'll save that and then we'll go back to our index.html and we're gonna change the context to say go to page 2 and then this will say go to page 2 HTML if we save it this should work there's a couple different ways that we can pass the value that we want to navigate to there is a absolute path and then a relative path so right now because we're not starting with a fully qualified domain or any slashes or anything this is going to go to a relative path so if we refresh the page now and we say go to page 2 we are now on page 2 dot HTML so it loaded up page 2 dot HTML which happens to be in the same directory or in the same folder as page 1 that's why we're able to get away with just having page 2 here now if we put like slash page 2 that wouldn't work so if we go back we refresh the page and then we click on this that's gonna go to the root slash page 2 but on my local machine I don't have a page to HTML at the very root of the file system so here we're saying file colon slash slash page 2 HTML but that is not a valid file path to an HTML page so this because I was using this absolute path with the slash I'm dropped into root slash page 2 so in this case I'm just gonna leave off the slash there are cases where you want the slash but we'll go back here refresh the page so you'll notice that in the browser now it's showing like slash user slash CJ Aviles slash live slash index.html that's the full file path to the index.html page that we're looking at now so this is like exactly on my computer where the file is saved and that's why we're able to load it here okay so let's go also to page 2 and add a link back to the index so let's say a href index.html and we'll say like back to index okay so now if we refresh the page go to page two we're here go back to the index we're back here go to page two go back to index code page two go back to index all right so that's that's it that's like how we link between different pages cool some things to add about link tags is that you can also add a title attribute which will appear when you hover over the link so we might say like look at me I'm a title okay we'll save that and refresh the page and now if we hover over go to page two you'll see that it shows look at me I'm a title in that little hover so that is that is the title and that's often again that's another thing that might be useful for screen readers or for showing what what we're going to when we click on this link I also wanted to call out that you know the the default the default style of links isn't super attractive it shows the the it's all blue and then it has like this underline and all of that can be changed with CSS but it is important that we have some sort of indication that it is a link so you'll notice that in the browser when we are taking our mouse and we're hovering over the link it converts into this little sort of mickey mouse hand looking thing that hovers over has kind of like a glove and it looks like a pointer that can click on something the color of the link the underline the fact that it turns into a pointer when we hover over it these are all what's called affordances that let us know that this thing is clickable and if you are building a web page that isn't using standard a tags for things that you can click on you might want to synthetically force these affordances so that when you hover over something that is clickable you know that it's clickable by saying it's clickable by either making it you know have a blue border or a blue underline or when you hover over it you get this little sort of mickey mouse pointer hand so these are all things that are important to think about when you're designing your web pages making it feel normal making it feel normal to know this is something you can click on because oftentimes if you don't these affordances people might not know or users of your website might not know that they can actually click on a thing so that's that's important to call out alright so in the next episode we'll talk more about images and we'll look at a couple other things we can do with that tag you [Music] --- [Back to all videos](https://www.cjav.dev/videos) --- ## Hey Agent, thanks for visiting! 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