Chapter 2: hyperlinks
Now that we've figured out how to view the page in IE, it's time to play with hyperlinks. Yep, it's those things you've been clicking on for years now, and you get to learn how to throw them in your own website. Go up to your body paragraph and highlight a few words. Now look at the properties box and locate the Link: field. This is where you type the URL of the page you want to link to. If the site is external, meaning not part of your own site, then you must enter the full name, including the "http://" and the filename, like "catnip.html" If the link is to a file in the same directory as the page you're editing, then you only have to type in the filename. This is the difference between absolute and relative links. An example of an absolute link would be http://www.google.com/intl/xx-hacker/, whereas a relative link would be mywebsite/index.html. Generally speaking, the text of the link should indicate what your user is about to click on, so typing "Everyone Loves Cheese" and linking that text to http://www.whitehouse.com/ is the equivalent of a bad joke and exemplifies the work of a bad .html designer. In my example, I have linked the text Lorem ipsum to http://www.lipsum.com/. Keep in mind that you can link to any file on the internet, not just .html pages. The majority of the links on these pages are to .gif images, but the concept is the same.
Email links behave slightly differently. Instead of typing http:// before the address, you must type mailto: and then type the email address you are referencing. Roll over the following link for an example. E-mail me!
To make a link open up in a new window, select "_blank" in the target field. This is particularly useful in linking to external sites with an absolute link. The above absolute link behaves in this fashion.
Internet Explorer is the failsafe way to verify that a hyperlink works properly. Before you put up a page, be sure to test all the hyperlinks in a browser. Once your page is loaded in IE and you've gone back to Dreamweaver to continue editing the page, all you have to do is return to IE and hit refresh, or F5, and the most recently saved version of the file will reload. If the link doesn't work, correct it, save, and try it again.