Links & Tag Attributes
Absolute vs. Relative URLs
Absolute URLs
Remember:
Absolute URLs include the entire web address
of a page and always begin with a protocol,
usually HTTP.
In the example in the previous section, the value for the href
attribute in the anchor tag was http://amazon.com. This probably looks a lot
like most URLs you have seen in that it begins with http, which is the
protocol
for the URL. A protocol tells the browser how to handle what
is at the URL. Most web pages use
HTTP, which stands for Hypertext
Transfer Protocol.
When a URL begins with the protocol, followed by "://", it is an
absolute URL, which means the entire address is included.
Relative URLs
There is another way to refer to URLs, a sort of shortcut that is often used when authoring web pages, which is a relative URL. A relative URL means you are telling the browser that:
- The file you are referring to is using http and
- It is on the same web site as the current page
Try It:
View the source for this page and look at
the URLs to see if they are relative or absolute.
For example, if you view the source of this page, you'll see most of
the URLs are relative; they do not specify that the page is http or the name
of the server.
Try It:
Create another html file and link one to the
other with a relative URL.
Relative URLs can be tricky in that you need to pay attention to
where the current page is in relation to the file you are pointing to.
If you refer to a file in another directory (like
a file folder), you have to make a
relative path to that file (where putting ../ means
to go up a directory). You don't need to do this for this lesson, but you may want to
explore it if you make web sites of your own.
End of Topic