title: ASP.NET MVC: ActionLink vs bare url
body: <p>In ASP.NET MVC I see I have handy HTML helpers that I can use to construct form fields and any number of other little things.  But then there's 'ActionLinks'.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Why use an ActionLink instead of just writing the darn url myself</strong> in an HTML anchor tag?</p>
  
  <p>In other words, why would I use </p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;%: Html.ActionLink("Back to List", "QuantityTypes") %&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>instead of just using plain ol' HTML and writing:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;a href="/internal/quantitytypes"&gt;Back to List&lt;/a&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Surely, I must get something extra with the ActionLink.  I'm just missing it, right?</p>