Links, sometimes called hyperlinks, are what make the Web truly weblike; they connect Web pages in Boston to Web pages in
Baton Rouge to Web pages in Bali any page can link to any other page, anywhere in the world! Just click, and you're off.
Your browser will automatically load whatever new page the link is pointing to.
Identifying Links
Links are usually very easy to spot; text links are typically underlined and a different color than the surrounding text
(blue is a very popular choice). Graphic hyperlinks sometimes have outlines drawn around them. But often, by design, the
links are less obvious. You can check a link by placing Netscape's arrow cursor on top of it. If it is a functioning link,
the cursor will change into a hand, and the URL (or Web address) of the link may appear in
the field at the bottom of the screen.
Three States of Links
As you navigate the Web, you might notice that links change color. These color changes represent the three "states" of
links. Before you click a link it will be, perhaps, blue. Then, as you are clicking on it, you may notice that it
momentarily turns into another color, like red. If you were to go back to the page, you would see that the link was now
green, purple, or some other color. These changes of color serve as a record of your travels around the Web and can save
you time by helping you remember which links you've already explored.
Opening a New Browser Window
Something that more and more links are doing is particularly confusing to newcomers: Sometimes when you click on a link,
instead of loading a new page in the same browser window, a new browser window opens for the new page on top of the old
page. That means you have two windows open at once. If the second one covers the original window exactly, you might not
even notice it opened - until you try to use the Back button. Then, because, you're in a new window, there's
nothing to go back to; so you can either pull the top window out of the way or click the close box in the upper-left
corner to get back to the original window.
You can choose to open any link in a new window. (People often choose to do that so they can continue reading the page
they are on while the new one loads, or to compare two pages side by side.) Just use your right mouse button to click on
it (or hold down your single mouse button if you don't have two), and a menu will pop up. One of the choices will be to
open a new window.
