In HTML the link tag is used to connect external sytle sheets to a web page. But the link tag has sever other uses. The link tag found in the head of the HTML document. The link tag is convey relationship between the current page and other Internet documents, and it is a singleton tag, it closed with a slash at the end of the tag <link />

Links and External Style Sheets

The stylesheet link looks like:

<link href=”styles.css” rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” />

The attribute href defines the URL where the style sheet is located. The type attribute defines the user what MIME type the linked document will be. It should always be “text/css”. Then the rel attribute indicates that the relationship of this link is a style sheet.

The Rel and Rev Attributes

The rel and rev attributes are where you define the type of link you’re including in your document. Rel and rev act as complementary attributes, rel defining related links that are forward while rev defines related links that are reverse from the current page. This is most often used in a series of pages, where you would define the rel=”next” and rev=”prev” links on the pages. Most links are considered forward or “rel” links.

Types of links can be include in the documents:

stylesheet – the most commonly used link type, this refers to an external style sheet
alternate – substitute versions of the page. These can be in other languages (such as French or Spanish) or other media types (such as PDF or PostScript)
start – the first document in a series of documents, of which the current page is a member
next – the next document in a series, following the current page
prev – the previous document in a series, preceding the current page
contents – refers to a document that acts as a table of contents for the pages
toc – an alternate reference to a table of contents, not all browsers support this type
index – refers to a document that acts as an index for the current page
glossary – refers to a document that provides a glossary of terms related to the current page
copyright – a copyright statement for the current page
chapter – refers to a document serving as a chapter in a collection of documents
section – refers to a document serving as a section in a collection of documents
subsection – refers to a document serving as a subsection in a collection of documents
appendix – refers to a document serving as an appendix in a collection of documents
help – refers to a document that provides help about the current document, including more information, other sources, and so on
bookmark – refers to a bookmark or key entry point within an extended document