Linking other pages and other websites
Using CSS in styling your web pages
Let's begin here.
Creating and placing hyperlinks
It is very important to create and place hyperlinks in your website to help your visitors navigate your site from pages to pages. These are the links displayed in your web pages that will change the web page displayed when clicked by visitors. These must be prominent and properly placed in your pages. If not, your visitors will be confused and will eventually leave your site unhappy or unsatisfied. Hence, he may never return. So, make sure that your hyperlinks are prominent, descriptive and orderly placed in your pages.
Linking your pages
In page 1, you have to place the following code where you want the visitor to click to go to your page 2:
<a href="http://your-domain-name.com/page-2-name" title="description using relevant keywords">your link description</a>
Looking at the codes, "a" is html anchor tag used for hyperlinks, "href" is the attribute referring to the URL of the destination page and "title" refers to the description of your link. If possible, use relevant keywords in your description for search engine optimization.
Now, type the above in your mywebpage.html and replace the domain name, web page name, title and link description with yours. Use relevant keywords in your link description for search engine optimization. Then, save and refresh your browser to show you how the above is displayed on the web.
To see more, hover or place your cursor on the link. The "title" value will be displayed on the link while the "href" value or URL of the destination page will be shown at the left side of the bottom bar of browser window. It may work only if you are online and your site is already active on the web.
Linking to other websites
You have to place the following code in your website pages where you want your visitors to click to go to other particular websites:
<a href="http://other-site-domain-name.com/page-name" title="description using relevant keywords" target="_blank">your link description</a>
If you notice, it is the same as linking your web pages but it is pointing to other website. So, we added the "target" attribute with value of "_blank" to open the destination page into new browser window. This will make your site remain active or open even if your visitors click the link to other website.
To try it, type the above in your mywebpage.html and replace the domain name, web page name and link description with yours. Use relevant keywords in your link description for search engine optimization. Then, save and refresh your browser to how the above is displayed on the web. Click the link and a new browser window will open while the page where you clicked the link remained open.
Hyperlinks with images
You may use images in your hyperlinks. In this case, the visitors can click an image in your web pages with links that will send them to other pages in your site or to other websites you have linked to. See the example below:
Linking to your other web pages
<a href="http://your-domain-name.com/other-page-name><img src="http://your-domain-name.com/image-directory/image-file" alt="your-image-description with relevant keywords" height="???" width="???" border="0"</a>
Linking to other websites
<a href="http://other-site-domain-name.com/page-name><img src="http://your-domain-name.com/image-directory/image-file" alt="your image description with relevant keywords" height="???" width="???" border="0"</a>
If you notice, it is just like you are inserting an image to your web page. The only difference, it is placed between the anchor tags <a href="URL"></a>. So, in place of link description, you use image. When your visitors click the image, the page will change to the destination page.
To try the above, place the image that you want to be used with hyperlinks in the same directory where your mywebpage.html is located. Then, type the above codes in your mywebpage.html but type only the image filename in the "src" value. Then, save and refresh the browser to effect the changes. Hover or place your cursor on the image. The "alt" value or the image description will be displayed on the image while the "href" value or URL of the destination page will be shown at the left side of the bottom bar of browser window.
Styling your web page using CSS
W3C.org requires the website style definitions must be placed in the style sheets or CSS. Styles are used to manipulate the design of the website such font sizes, colors, font face, box properties, table properties, paragraph format, etc.
Placing your styles within the head or in a separate CSS file let you control the style of your web pages in just one page. Now, I will tell you the easy way to create your style sheets within the head tags and how it is implemented in the within the body tags.
To define a style, you have to use a selector as a reference. Basic selectors are body, div, span, li, table, td and p. div is used for group of paragraphs, p is for one paragraph, span is for selected characters, words or phrases, li is for lists, table is for table and td is for table data. The good thing here is you can make your own selectors using names you prefer.
Creating style sheets is the same as what we have done in CSS boxes. Whatever style properties you assigned to those selecters, it will affect area or content of your web pages where you have used the corresponding selectors. See example below:
<style type="text/css">
body {
margin: 10%;
color: #00f;
background: #ff0;
text-align: center;
}
</style>
In the above style, all your contents within the body tags (<body> and </body>) will have the above style properties. Try it by typing the above in your mywebpage.html within the head tags. Save it and refresh your browser and see effect in your web page.
Let's see another example:
<style type="text/css">
p {
margin: 20px;
color: #cff;
background: #ccc;
text-align: right;
}
</style>
All of your content that you have placed within <p> and </p> will have the above style properties. Now, type the above to your mywebpage.html within the head tags, save and refresh your browser and see the results.
Now, let's make our own selectors. As explained in creating CSS boxes, we can make an id and a class selectors and implement as follows:
<style type="text/css">
#ownidselector {
margin: 0px;
text-decoration: underline;
background: cff;
}
.ownclassselector {
margin: 10px;
font-size: 16px;
font-style: italic;
color: #f00;
}
.ownclassselector2 {
font-weight: bold;
font-family: courier;
border: 1px dashed #cff;
}
</style>
<body>
<div id="ownidselector">This is an example of using the id selector</div>
<div class="ownclassselector">This is an example of using the class selector</div>
<div id="ownidselector" class="ownclassselector">This is an example of using both the id and class selectors</div>
<span id="ownidselector">This is an example</span> of using span with id selector and <span class="ownclassselector">class selector</span>
This is an example of using <span id="ownidselector" class="ownclassselector">both the id and class selectors</span>
This is an example of using <span class="ownclassselector ownclassselector2">the two class selectors at the same time</span>
</body>
Let's me explain to you the above style properties that are not discussed in Creating CSS Boxes:
text-decoration: underline - creates underline to the text or characters. You may use "none" instead of "underline" to remove the underline.
font-size: 16px - fixes the size of the font within the affected selector. You may use px, em, pt and % as unit of measure.
font-style: italic - makes the text or characters italic. You may also use normal, oblique.
color: #f00 - defines the color of the text or characters. You may use different web colors here. It is advisable to use web-safe colors as other computers or browsers could not display other colors.
font-weight: bold - makes the text or characters bold. You may use also normal, bolder, lighter, 100 up to 900.
font-family: courier - defines the font type of the text or characters. Common font types are arial, verdana and helvetica.
Type the above codes to your mywebpage.html within the style and body tags as noted, then save and refresh your browser to see the effects of the above style properties. You may change the values, then save and refresh to familiarize yourself with styling properties.
For complete web-safe color codes and complete list of style properties, simply visit my site.
When you have already familiarized yourself with the html and CSS codes, it will be easy for you to create a web page.
I hope you've learned something in this tutorial. Just continue practicing and learning. Research, research, research. There so many free tutorials here on the web.
To learn more of HTML and CSS, search Google by typing "html tutorial" or "css tutorial" - Click Search and you will find many choices. For standards, you may visit www.W3C.org.
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