Links are essential elements of web pages; they constitute the essence of the whole concept of the World Wide Web. Not surprisingly, the template prepared to help in the preparation of the i-Structure course supports a wide variety of links. Indeed, the necessity of the course has led to the identification of a large number of “links” in the broadest sense of the word. The purpose of this document is to define the various links and to explain how they can be used to produce course documents.

Types of links

A hyperlink is a textual or graphical element that, when followed by a mouse click or other user action leads to another place, either in the same document (local link), in another document in the same web site, but also to entirely different document types (images, videos, animations, PDF, etc.), but also different web sites and even different types of Internet sites (ftp or gopher for example). This definition is very broad, flexible and extensible, and largely explains the ongoing expansion of the web. For the purpose of the course, however, it is useful to classify and to organize somewhat the concept of links, with the aim that the student understands better what will happen when he or she clicks to follow a link.