Overview
A file path describes the location of a file (images, style sheets, external JavaScript) or document (other site pages) in a web site’s directory structure.
Relative File Paths
The “picture.jpg” file is located in the same directory as the current page.
<img decoding="async" src="picture.jpg" />The “picture.jpg” file is located in the images directory in the current folder.
<img decoding="async" src="images/picture.jpg" />The “picture.jpg” file is located in the images directory at the root of the current page.
<img decoding="async" src="/images/picture.jpg" />The “picture.jpg” file is located in the directory one level up from the current folder.
<img decoding="async" src="../picture.jpg" />Note
Using ../ before the directory or file will raise your relative link one directory before linking down to your intended target. If you need to raise yourself two directories, you would use ../../ and so on.
Absolute File Path
An absolute link contains the entire address from the https to the domain.com to the directory and finally the file itself. Being that it’s absolute, you could place it in the URL bar at the top of the browser and it would take you directly to the targeted page, image, or file.
<img decoding="async" src="https://www.1smartchicken.com/images/picture.jpg" alt="My Picture" />HTML Notes:
- In our HTML section the term “tag” and “element” are often used interchangeably to refer to both the tag used to create a page element and the element created by the tag (<p> tag = <p> element = paragraph on the page)
- HTML5 is not case sensitive; so <P> is the same as <p>, <H1> is the same as <h1>
- Global attributes can be used with all HTML tags and are therefore not mentioned on every tag page
- To write clean, readable HTML code, it is best to use indentation whereas elements within elements are indented (tabbed or spaces) to create something that looks like a project outline
- The browser will automatically remove any extra spaces and lines in your HTML code when the page is displayed
- Double quotes or single quotes can be used around HTML attribute values, but when the attribute value itself contains one form of quote, it will be necessary to use the other around the attribute
We’d like to acknowledge that we learned a great deal of our coding from W3Schools and TutorialsPoint, borrowing heavily from their teaching process and excellent code examples. We highly recommend both sites to deepen your experience, and further your coding journey. We’re just hitting the basics here at 1SMARTchicken.