Linking to Other Net Resources
The World Wide Web is a popular part of the entire Internet, but many others resources are available. Most of them were around long before the Web was even born and, as a result, they have a lot of stuff on them.Also as a result of the Web's newness, the other resources sometimes have a much wider audience base. Whether you're designing a home page for yourself or for your company, you may want to know how to link to those resources.
These resources can take various shapes, from the peanut gallery that is Usenet news, to personal e-mail, to the capability to access other computers through Telnet. Although you can create your own versions of these resources using forms, most of the time you wouldn't want to do so. For example, you could easily create a page with many HTML form tags, text elements, and a submit button for e-mail, but simply creating a link to
e-mail with a particular address would be easier. This way, you can more easily update the page because you don't have to worry about which forms to read. Also, sometimes browsers have built-in support for some of the other resources, giving the user faster response time.
You especially want to create links to other resources on the Net if you're already using a resource. If you already have a Gopher site with information that's updated automatically, why rebuild it to fit the Web? Just
adding a hyperlink to your Gopher site makes more sense. Similarly, if you're running a BBS that's on the Internet, putting in a Telnet link to it makes more sense. There's no reason for recreating, or even mirroring, your BBS through forms for the Web.
