The Basics of Links & Images, Biol 3068.03B Friday Ja n 23
Table of Contents- Links to other pages
- Images
- Links within a web page
- Using "what you see is what you get" editors
- Addresses for our Reports
Links to other pages
Links are the knitty gritty of Web pages, the levers we press to jump to other pages. In html, links are indicated by the paired tags:<a></a>
The first < a > tag has an "HREF attribute" (href stands for Hype rtextural REFerence)
You insert the URL of the page plus the the phrase or name you want to be highl ighted as a link as in the following example
< A HREF="http://www.cogs.ns.ca/">College of Geographic Design</A>
If you were listing a number of links, this one would appear on the page as:
Unless you are already familiar with the concept of relative addresses, copy in or write in the full URL. If you are using a browse (search) feature of an html editor to paste in the link, it may paste in a relative address rathe r than the full address. A relative address provides only the address within the system in which you are located - it is analagous to addressing a letter to so meone within Dalhousie with only the within Dal component of the address indicat ed ( e.g. Prof. Smith, History Dept.). But you can always use the full address, which is what you should do unless or u ntil you have a firm grasp on relative addresses. (The problem with not doing th at is that if the page you are making is placed in a different system, or a dif ferent level of a hierarchy, the address will be wrong).
Images
The basic tag for linking images to pages is: <IMG SRC="filename">
More...
<IMG SRC="http://is.dal.ca/~dp/pics/apples.jpg" WIDTH="213" HEIGHT="160" A LT="apples">
<P>Apples ready for the pickin
The width and height in the expression above specify dimensions in pixels. Exper iment with that to get an idea of what different values will give you. Note that if you change dimensions, change the two axes proportionally or the picture wil l be distorted.
The ALT="apples" part inserts a description of what's in the image when the actual is not shown.
Apples ready for the pickin
Ravi has prepared some more detailed comments about types of images etc (see sep arate handout or go to :http://ug .cs.dal.ca/~gunoo/image.htm) The photos dp has prepared for this class are located in the directory "pics" for which the URL is: http://is.dal.ca/~dp/ pics If you open this location, you should see a list of the photos; you can see an individual photo by clicking on the title.
Links within a web page
These are helpful where you have a lengthy document. You can insert a Table of contents at the beginning, and then have links to bring you back to that regu larly, or to go directly to other parts of the page. To create these internal li nks, you need to do some HTML tagging at the target of the links - this is where the viewers end up when the link is made. More on this later (or do some trials using the html editor, or look at the source code for the Table o f Contents and target html on this page to see how links were made).
Using "what you see is what you get" editors
The latest versions of Web browsers such as Netscape 4 have an editing function that allows you to make Web pages without even looking at the code. These are fi ne, but a note of caution: many of the features of these editors will not show up when pages are opened using older browsers. So when you are putting material out on the Web for widespread access, you want to keep it simple. That will be the case for our material - so my suggestion (firm request) is: use these editors to make the simple formatt ing easier, but don't get too fancy! Also, that will make it easier for us whe n we move into our Web site construction activity in March; then, we will want t o adopt a standard format for our material, and there will be some reformatting required.Addresses for our Reports
To make access outside of WebCT easier for you, the class reports and related ma terials will be placed in dp's public directory. (On the WebCT site, these will be listed, with links to the pages, so you can still access them readily from o ur WebCT site). The hierarchy and naming of these directories and files will b e:- http://is.dal.ca/~dp/ (dp's public directory)
- pics/ (this contains photos you can use in reports)
- classpics/ (this contains the photographs of yourselves
- reports/ (all reports will go in here)
- whoweare.html (this will have links to your individual pages)
- whoSurnameis.html (your individual page)
- Surnameic.html (your information card report)
- Surnamest.html (your special topics report)
- Mondayps1.html (Monday Problem Solving Report #1; there will be five)
http://is.dal.ca/~dp/reports/Macseedst.html
The full URL for MacSeed's photo would be
http://is.dal.ca/~dp/classpics/Macseedst.jpg