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Address Footers and E-Mail Links

Objectives

• insert a stylized footer at the bottom of a page
• create a hypertext link that will send an e-mail message

Lesson

A worthwhile feature of web pages is a "footer" at the bottom of a page that provides information about the author and the document, maybe the last date it was modified, as well as a means to send the author a message by e-mail. The is the place for the address tag which usually does no more then stylizing a block of text in italic and offsetting it to a new line.

Stylistically, it is good to make these brief, informative, and consistent between different web pages. Some useful information to include is:

• Title or subject of the current page
• Date it was created/updated
• Copyright if appropriate (or even meaningful?)
• Name and e-mail for the web page author
• Name and hypertext link to affiliation/organization

As examples, see the footers at the bottom of very web page in this tutorial. In composing your own style, take a look at other web pages for ideas. Imitation still is a very high form of flattery! The HTML format for the address tag might look like:

    <address>
    Page Title
    Last Updated February 31, 1999
    Web Page by My Name Here (me@abc.edu)
    ABC University
    </address>    

    <address>
    <b>Page Title</b> <br>
    Last Updated February 31, 1999 <br>
    Web Page by My Name Here (me@abc.edu) <br>
    <a href="http://www.abc.edu/">ABC University</a><br>
    </address>    

Now, suppose someone was reading your page and wanted to send you a comment on how nice your page looked. They would have to write down your e-mail address, launch another program, and send you a message. Wouldn't it be great if you could send email from your Web browser? Well, most web browsers now can!

The way to do this is to create a hypertext link with the mailto type in the URL (see lesson 8b for a refresher). Create an email hypertext link like this:

    <a href="mailto:levine@maricopa.edu">send an e-mail to alan</a>

Note that you can have any text (or graphic) act as the hypertext link. So in the previous example, we would modify the HTML to have the internet address create the link for typing e-mail.

    <address>
    <b>Page Title</b> <br>
    Last Updated February 31, 1999 <br>
    Web Page by My Name Here <a href="mailto:me@abc.edu">(me@abc.edu)</a> <br>
    <a href="http://www.abc.edu/">ABC University</a><br>
    </address>    

Now it is time to add a footer to your HTML file. For this example, we assume you are "Lorrie Lava" a staff Volcanologist at Big University (feel free to put your own information in place of what is below):

1. Open the HTML file, Volc.html in your text editor.
2. At the bottom of the document (but above the </body></html> tags), add the following:

   <HR>
   <address><B>Volcanoes!</B> An example to demonstrate creating Web Pages<br>
   created by Lorrie Lava, <A HREF="mailto:lava@pele.bigu.edu">lava@pele.bigu.edu</A><br>
   Volcanic Studies, <A HREF="http://www.bigu.edu/">Big University</A><p>
   <TT>last modified: April 1, 1991</TT>
   </address>
   <p>
   

   NOTE: We've used several HTML tags that have been covered in previous lessons. Also note the extra <p> tag at the bottom; this makes sure the last line of text is always visible.

3. Save and Reload the HTML file.

Check Your Work

Review

1. What does an address tag do?
2. Does an address tag have to be at the bottom?
3. How do you create a tag that will e-mail to you? to someone else?

Independent Practice

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