Special Features

The addr function uses another function internally which you can also use directly. It's called url(). There are a few properties you can specify. They are valid for the remainder of the page (but you can toggle them as often as you like).

With url(), you get additional functionality when you link to

  Web sites:		<?=$p->url("http://www.mysite.co");?>
  Local HTML files:	<?=$p->url("html-file.html");?>
  Local text files:	<?=$p->url("text-file.txt");?>
  Local image files:	<?=$p->url("image.png");?>	(or gif, or jpg)
  Local documents:	<?=$p->url("document.pdf");?>	(or PS, or )
  Local archive files:	<?=$p->url("archive.zip");?>	(or tgz, or tar.gz)

What do I get?

There are several settings you can use to control how links get displayed.

• If you set $p->url_newwindow = true; links will open in a new window (or tab, if your browser supports it).
• If you set $p->url_popup = true;, the page title will also be displayed in a small tooltip popup window when you move your mouse over the link.

If you set $p->url_notitle = false; (it's true by default) before using the above commands, then writing a link in the previously discussed fashion will have the following effects:

• Links to remote web sites will receive the HTML title of the target document as the link text. I.e. <?=$p->url("http://www.linux.com");?> will result in Linux.com | The source for Linux information.
  Don't use this too often on one page as the title must be fetched remotely and this takes a bit of time, ie. slows down the loading of your web site!
• Links to local HTML files will receive the same treatment.
• Links to other local files will automagically display the file name (or title) and size in the link. i.e. <?=$p->url("../pic/titel.png")?> will result in titel.png [70 kb].
• Links to FTP pages will also display file size and location (incomplete as of now... does anybody want to finish this?)

In all cases you can (optionally) also specify a custom title, then the 'real' title will be displayed as a popup window when you move your mouse over the link. For example <?=$p->url("http://www.linux.com", "Linux.com Home Page");?> will result in Linux.com Home Page.

What else do I get?

I encourage you to use the url() function exclusively for all links in your pages. It is a bit more work for the server, but it is extensible: if you later decide you want to (for example)

• hide or change the status bar for all external links
• record where users leave your site (what external links they click on)
• change the appearance of links (eg. FTP links are displayed in green or with an icon)
• ...

... you can do that by extending the url() function. You cannot do that if you used the 'old' HTML way of displaying links.