Links 11

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In computing, a hyperlink is a reference in a document to an external piece of information. The most common usage is in the Internet to browse through web pages: some text in the current document is highlighted so that when clicked, the browser automatically displays another page or changes the current page to show the referenced content. The highlighted element is known as a hyperlink (or link for short) and makes a logical connection between two places in the same or different documents. Hyperlinks are the basic building block of hypertexts. For example, some key words in a wiki such as Wikipedia are highlighted, and provide links to explanations of that words at other pages in the same wiki.

In directed links the area from which the hyperlink can be activated is called its anchor (or source anchor); its target (or destination anchor) is what the link points to, which may be another location within the same page or document, another page or document, or a specific location within another page or document. Hyperlinks can also be bidirectional; in that case both linked documents will have an anchor each, leading to the other document respectively.

Links are widely used for reference within a hypertext document in order to help the end user find the reference easily without scrolling down the page or type a URL (web address) into the location bar directly.

To insert a hyperlink to another place is often simply called to "link". Hypertext (meaning "more than just text") is a form of text typically published on websites that provides a richer functionality than simple text documents by allowing the reader to learn about topics within the article by clicking on key words. Typically the link anchor will be descriptive of the target's content, for example Wikipedia home page, but badly designed or malicious sites may use obscure links or obfuscated links which make it hard to work out where the link will take you.