Other Link Types

You can link to other resources on the Internet besides HTML documents.

The general philosophy is if it's out there, you can construct an URL to point at it.

mailto The most basic form on "interaction" available on the Web is the simple inclusion of information about e-mail. In some cases, just listing an e-mail address is better than nothing. However, it is more common to go a step further and create a link to an e-mail address. There is a special type of link that you can use which treats an e-mail address as a URL. This makes it easy for a reader to send electronic mail to a specific person or mail alias. This will create a mail window that is already configured for the specified alias. It includes an anchor, HREF with a mailto: with address, clickable text, and a close anchor. The following is the basic format of the HTML code: <A HREF="mailto:name@address.edu">Name</A> For example: <A HREF="mailto:mehopper@world.com">mehopper@world.com</A> Create a "mailto" link of your own and add it to your standard footer. Use it in all of your pages that you create. See Advanced Mailto Link Castro p. 281 (alt. p. 313)

Other Types of URLS

Specific methods also exist for ftp, gopher, news, and WAIS servers,and telnet sessions.
Browsers will take different actions depending on the type of resource accessed.

The URL has several parts, not all of which are required.

In order of appearance, they specify...

• the method to be used to access the resource
• the name of the server providing the resource
• the port number to be used on the server
• the directory path to the resource
• the file name of the resource
• the named element in the html document

"scheme://hostserver.domain:port/path/file#anchor"

The port number is sort of like the telephone extension number of the server.
Most URLs you find do not include a port number since most servers use the defaults.
The port number can generally be omitted.

Scheme can be any one of the following:

• file - a file on your local system
• http - a file on a World Wide Web server (WWW assumes port 80)
  If the URL points to a directory, then the directory will be displayed
  by the browser in a standard format with links for subdirectories or files.
• gopher - a file on a Gopher server (gopher assumes default port 70)
  If a URL for a gopher resource ends in a specific file name,
  then the file is downloaded to the reader's computer.
  e.g. gopher://gopher.micro.umn.edu/appl.pdf
• WAIS - a file on a WAIS server
• ftp - a file on an anonymous FTP server e.g.
  If a URL for a ftp resource ends in a specific file name,
  then the file is downloaded to the reader's computer.
  e.g. ftp://ftp.uu.net/doc/literacy/obi/World.Factbook
• telnet - a connection to a telnet based service e.g. telnet://compuserve.com
• news - a Usenet newsgroup e.g. news:alt.cows.moo
  The format for accessing Usenet newsgroups, as you can see,
  is different from the format for accessing other Internet resources
  in that it does not specify a news (NNTP) server. The server name is set
  somewhere else, typically somewhere in the browser's preferences dialog.
  The idea is that,theoretically all NNTP servers have the same content,
  so the server choice should be left up to the reader.

Experiment with creating links to resources using these special types of URLs.
(Pay particular attention to trying to link to non-HTML documents on your drive,
FTP files on other servers --which take some effort to find -- and also a telnet session.)

See Other URLs Castro pp. 27-28 (alt. pp. 27-29)
See Advanced Links Castro pp. 114-117 (alt. pp. 124, 125)
See Links--changing status label Castro p. 280 (alt. p. 303)