Lesson 6: Creating hyperlinks to other pages
This lesson covers navigation between WML cards. As with HTML, navigation is supported by the a tags
<a></a>
The main attribute of these a tags is the 'href' attribute, which specifies the hyperlink target of the anchors. For example:
<a href="target">text</a>
When navigating between cards in the same deck, targets are specified using a '#' before the card's id value. The following script provides an example of two cards which link to each other in this way.
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1.
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<?xml version="1.0"?>
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2.
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<!DOCTYPE wml PUBLIC
"-//WAPFORUM//DTD WML 1.1//EN" "http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/wml_1.1.xml">
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<wml>
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<card id="card1" title="Welcome">
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<p>
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Here is a link to<br/>
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<a href="#card2" title="Card2">Card 2</a>
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</p>
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</card>
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<card id="card2" title="Card 2">
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<p>
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Here is a link back to the<br/>
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<a href="#card1">Welcome Page.</a><br/> (Card1)
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</p>
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</card>
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</wml>
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As can be seen from this script, anchors can also take a value for the 'title' attribute (the value defaults to 'link'). Devices use this attribute in different ways; for instance, the Phone.com device makes it the value of the 'accept' key. Note that to ensure compatibility with different browsers, the title value should be a maximum of 5 characters.
The pictures below demonstrate how this code looks in the development kit browsers from Phone.com and Nokia.
phone.com
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Nokia
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To navigate from a card to another card outside its deck, one gives the URL of the deck, plus '#' plus the card's id. For instance, the following code describes a link to the card named 'card1', found in the local file 'example7.wml'.
<a href="example7.wml#card1" title="ex7">example 7</a>
The next example describes a link to a card named 'card2', found in a remote file:
<a href="http://wap.example.com/files/index.wml#card2">link</a>
If no id specification is given after a URL, the browser pulls out the first card in the given deck.
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