This direct link will get the time of day, save it in a variable of the page, and show it underneath this paragraph using a InsertText component.
This action link will do the same thing as the direct link (it uses the same listener method). If you would like to observe the difference in processing, run this example from a console prompt with debug enabled. The listener method will output the string
"TIME LISTENER METHOD CALLED". You will notice the place in the render cycle in which the method is called is different depending upon the link type that you click.