A link is a reference, inserted in a web page, that points to another document. You can turn almost any kind of asset into a link, but the most common kind of link is a text link.
You can create links at any stage of the site-creation process. In this section, you'll create links for the navigation bar, even though you haven't formatted the text into the form of a navigation bar yet.
The cafe_townsend site root folder contains a finished HTML page that you can link to (a menu page for Cafe Townsend). You'll use this page for all of the links in the navigation, even though you would have distinct pages for each of these links if you were building a real site.
With the index.html page open in the Document window, select the word Cuisine that you typed in the first cell of the three-columned table. Be careful to select the word Cuisine only, and not the space after it.
In the Property inspector (Window > Properties), click the folder icon next to the Link text box.
In the Select File dialog box, browse to the menu.html file (which is in the same folder as the index.html file), and click OK (Windows) or Choose (Macintosh).
Click once on the page to deselect the word Cuisine. The Cuisine text is underlined and blue, indicating that it's now a link.
Repeat the previous steps to link each word or set of words that you typed for the navigation. You want to create six more links: one for Chef Ipsum, Articles, Special Events, Location, Menu, and Contact Us.
Link each word or set of words to the menu.html page, and be careful to avoid the space before and after the words or set of words when you create your links. This is only a set of dummy links; in a real-world site, you would link each word in the navigation to its own distinct page.
NOTE
Links don't work when you click them in the Document window in Dreamweaver; links work only in a browser. To make sure your links work correctly, preview your page in a browser. For instructions about how to do this, continue to Preview your page in a browser.
Save your page.
Comments
22Laura
said on
Oct 2, 2005
at
5:49 PM :
When I go to F12 to preview, it's difficult to see the 'links' as the blue blends in with the brownish background. In the next tutorial it looks like this will change...but if I don't do the CSS (for right now, I'm completely non-technical) could I just remedy this by changing link color? Thanks!
No screen name
said on
Oct 13, 2005
at
5:43 PM :
Laura - yes, you could do that if you change the link color in the Page Properties section. That way, the CSS will still determine the actual link color when added.
Pete
idelgado
said on
Oct 22, 2005
at
8:35 AM :
How do you create a link to an external website?
chucknado
said on
Oct 24, 2005
at
2:20 PM :
Enter the website's address in the Link textbox on the Property inspector.
No screen name
said on
Oct 31, 2005
at
8:22 PM :
Hey, i think that maybe some content about menus and pop-ups would be cool to improve the skills of beginners. Thanks in advance!
No screen name
said on
Nov 10, 2005
at
4:56 PM :
When I put a website address in the link window in the property inspector to get an external link, it looks for the address in my web folder file. How do you create an external link to another website?
chucknado
said on
Nov 11, 2005
at
4:26 PM :
Links in Design view are disabled. Press F12 (Windows) or Control+F12 (Mac) to view the page in a browser and then click the link.
AdoptAGreyhound
said on
Sep 8, 2006
at
10:32 AM :
When creating a link to a website, you must include "http://" in the link.
No screen name
said on
May 18, 2007
at
1:13 AM :
I re-named my index.html to main.html. When i tried to navigate to my other pages via the links in IE6, the link just took me back to the top of index.html. This has happened to all my links. I tried naming main.html back to index.html, but the links still don't work. Just can't work it out.
Comments
22Laura said on Oct 2, 2005 at 5:49 PM : No screen name said on Oct 13, 2005 at 5:43 PM : idelgado said on Oct 22, 2005 at 8:35 AM : chucknado said on Oct 24, 2005 at 2:20 PM : No screen name said on Oct 31, 2005 at 8:22 PM : No screen name said on Nov 10, 2005 at 4:56 PM :