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hyperlink
A hyperlink is a user interface element that consists of a word or several words which are used to direct a user, upon the clicking of the element, to either a specific location, a specific resource or a specific in-page reference to which the element links.
The concept of the hyperlink has formed the core of the concept of hypertext, in that it allows for the publication of electronic documents which are "linked" to each other by way of a user clicking on the aforementioned element in a text document. Multiple words can be linked to other documents within a single document, as was demonstrated in the stand-alone database software applications like HyperCard in the 1980s. However, beginning in 1992, a British mathematician named Tim Berners-Lee and his co-worker at a nuclear research facility in Switzerland, Robert Caillau, began posting such linked text documents to an Internet server; this necessitated the use of the universal resource locator, a string which, in a human-readable manner, directed the user to the location of another document on a specific Internet server. The World Wide Web was thus conceived from previously-existing technologies and concepts, and is used extensively in the 21st century.
In wikis[edit]
The first wiki, or website was created to allow users to easily create, edit and link documents together within the wiki; to that end, Ward Cunningham's wiki (which has continuously run since 1994) allowed for users to create links to both existent and non-existent articles within the wiki by using CamelCase syntax. If a page was not created yet but was hyperlinked within another wiki document, one could click the link to the non-existent article, which would then direct the user to a "Create new page" user interface to allow the user to create a new page with new hyperlinks.
This was later enhanced in newer wikis, such as Wikipedia; in Wikipedia's software, CamelCase syntax for hyperlinks were dropped in favor of "free links", or links which were created from simply appending double brackets to both sides of a word or words. Furthermore, the concept of the "redlink", or a text link that is colored red to denote a link to a non-existent article, was advanced by Wikipedia.
In P2P networks[edit]
In Gnutella, a prominently-used network protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing, magnet links are primarily used to retrieve available, downloadable instances of media files from computers currently using Gnutella. However, such links are machine-generated (and barely-human-readable).
