How do I create a link?

Use an anchor element. The HREF attribute specifies the URL of the document that you want to link to. The following example links the text "Web Authoring FAQ" to <URL:http://www.htmlhelp.com/faq/html/>:
<A HREF="http://www.yoursite.com/faq/html/">Web Authoring FAQ</A>

 

How do I create a link that opens a new window?

<a target="_blank" href=...> opens a new, unnamed window.
<a target="example" href=...> opens a new window named "example", provided that a window or frame by that name does not already exist.
Note that the TARGET attribute is not part of HTML 4 Strict. In HTML 4 Strict, new windows can be created only with JavaScript. links that open new windows can be annoying to your readers if there is not a good reason for them.

 

How do I let people download a file from my page?

Once the file is uploaded to the server, you need only use an anchor reference tag to link to it. An example would be:
<a href="../files/foo.zip">Download Foo Now! (100kb ZIP)</a>

 

How do I create a button which acts like a link?

This is best done with a small form:

<FORM ACTION="[URL]" METHOD=GET>
<INPUT TYPE=submit VALUE="Text on button">
</FORM>

If you want to line up buttons next to each other, you will have to put them in a one-row table, with each button in a separate cell.
Note that search engines might not find the target document unless there is a normal link somewhere else on the page.
A go-to-other-page button can also be coded in JavaScript, but the above is standard HTML and works for more readers.

 

How can I make a form with custom buttons?

Rather than a normal submit button (<input type="submit" ...>), you can use the image input type (<input type="image" ...>). The image input type specifies a graphical submit button that functions like a server-side image map.
Unlike normal submit buttons (which return a name=value pair), the image input type returns the x-y coordinates of the location where the user clicked on the image. The browser returns the x-y coordinates as name.x=000 and name.y=000 pairs.
For compatability with various non-graphical browsing environments, the VALUE and ALT attributes should be set to the same value as the NAME attribute. For example:
<input type="image" name="Send" alt="Send" value="Send" src="send-button.gif">
For the reset button, one could use <button type="reset" ...>, JavaScript, and/or style sheets, although none of these mechanisms work universally.

 

How do I specify page breaks in HTML?

There is no way in standard HTML to specify where page breaks will occur when printing a page. HTML was designed to be a device-independent structural definition language, and page breaks depend on things like the fonts and paper size that the person viewing the page is using.