A hyperlink, is a reference or navigation element in a document to another section of the same document or to another document that may be on a (different) website.
Everything underlined on this page is a hyperlink
Embedded link
An embedded link is a link embedded in an object such as hyper text or a hot area. Example: The first word of this sentence is an "example" of an embedded link.
Hot Area
A hot area (image map in HTML) is an invisible area of the screen that covers a text label or graphical images. A technical description of a hot area is a list of coordinates relating to a specific area on a screen created in order to hyperlink areas of the image to various destinations, disable linking via negative space around irregular shapes, or enable linking via invisible areas. For example, a map of the world may have each irregular shaped country hyperlinked to further information about that country. A separate invisible hot area interface allows for swapping skins or labels within the linked hot areas without repetitive embedding of links in the various skin elements.
Inline link
An inline link displays remote content without the need for embedding the content. The remote content may be accessed with or without the user selecting the link. Inline links may display specific parts of the content (e.g. thumbnail, low resolution preview, cropped sections, magnified sections, description text, etc.) and access other parts or the full content when needed, as is the case with print publishing software. This allows for smaller file sizes and quicker response to changes when the full linked content is not needed, as is the case when rearranging a page layout.
Random accessed
Random-accessed linking data are links retrieved from a data base or variable containers in a program when the retrieval function is from user interaction (e.g. dynamic menu from an address book) or non-interactive (e.g. random, calculated) process.
Hardware accessed
A hardware-accessed link is a link that activates directly via an input device (e.g. keyboard, microphone, remote control) without the need or use of a graphical user interface