Using Macromedia

Dreamweaver MX 2004

Links

Links are the bits in the document (usually displayed as blue and underlined) that the user can click on to move to another document, site, or part of the document. Links are usually text, but images and some other elements can also be links.

To make any piece of text a hyperlink to another page, select the text, then put the URL which you want the link to go to in the box marked 'Link' in the Properties window.

Want to remove the link? Select the text, and (WITH the text selected) delete the URL from the Link box; or go to the Modify menu and choose Remove Link.

You can link to a particular place either in the same document or another one, if a named anchor has been set up where you want to link to.

Named anchors/Internal Links

Named anchors (which Netscape Composer calls 'targets'), let you make internal links to specific parts of a document where the named anchors are set.. You can also link to the internal anchor from another document. Tables of contents for long documents are often done this way.

Setting the named anchor: Select the text where you want the anchor, then from the Insert menu, choose Named Anchor. You can also just press Ctrl-Alt-A on the keyboard, or choose the anchor item in the Insert panel.

In the window that comes up, type in a name for the anchor (anchors should be single words). [insert named anchor window]

The position of the anchor will be shown by a small icon: [named anchor icon] that looks something like an anchor (it's usually yellow). To change the name of an anchor, click on the anchor icon to get the named anchor Properties Panel:
[named anchor properties'
and change the name.

To link to the named anchor, select the text that is going to be the link, and type in the Link field of the Properties window a # and the name of the anchor: #anchor.
[link to an internal anchor]

To link to a named anchor in another file, in the Link field put the filename (or full URL), a pound sign, and the name of the anchor:
[link to internal anchor in a file]

Email Links

In HTML, a mailto, or email, link lets the user send email to a specified email address. When the link is clicked, the browser brings up a mail program message window, with the to: address already set to the specified email. The user may then type in their message and send it: www@lehigh.edu

You can set up a mailto link by putting mailto:[the email address] in the Link property for text, but Dreamweaver offers a much easier way.

To create an Email link, click where you want to insert the link, then click the Email button in the Insert panel [email button], or choose Email Link from the Insert menu.
[Insert Email link window]
In the dialog box that appears

The link will appear:
Email the Author

If you click on the text, you will see the link property shows mailto:emailaddress.

If you click the Email button when you have text selected, the text will automatically be inserted into the Text portion of the Insert Email Link box.

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Document Properties

Jennifer Heise, Last updated May 27, 2003