external link - is even easier than linking to an internal link. All you need is the URL of the page to which you want to link, and youre most of the way there. To create an external link, follow these steps: 1. In Dreamweaver, open the page from which you want to link. 2. Select the text or image that you want to act as a link. 3. In the Link text box in the Properties inspector, type the URL of the page you want your text or image to link to. The link is automatically set. (In the example in Figure 2-7, I created a link to my site about family-oriented Web sites at www.digitalfamily.com.) Although in most browsers, you dont have to type the http:// at the beginning of a Web site address to get to a site, you must always use the full URL, including the http://, when you create an external link in HTML. Otherwise, the browser cant find the correct external site address and the visitor probably end ups on an error page. Setting a link to an e-mail address Another common link option goes to an e-mail address. Visitors can send you messages easily with e-mail links. I always recommend that you invite visitors to contact you because they can point out mistakes in your site and give you valuable feedback about how you can further develop your site. Setting a link to an e-mail address is just as easy as setting a link to another Web page. Before you start, you need to know the e-mail address to which you want to link. The only other thing you need to know is that e-mail links Figure 2-7: Link text or an image to another Web site. 56 Part I: Fulfilling Your Dreams must begin with the code mailto: (no //). Heres an example of the full line of code behind an e-mail link: <A HREF="mailto:janine@jcwarner.com">Send a message to Janine</A> When visitors to your Web site click an e-mail link, their browsers automatically launch their associated e-mail programs and create a blank e-mail message to the specified e-mail address. This is a cool trick, but it can be disconcerting to your users if they dont expect it to happen. Thats why I always try to notify users when I use e-mail links by labeling them so that link clearly goes to an e-mail address and not to another Web page. To create an e-mail link in Dreamweaver, follow these steps: 1. In Dreamweaver, open the page on which you want to create an e-mail link and insert your cursor where you want the link. 2. If you want to link a text block, highlight the text that you want to act as the link. 3. Click the Email Link icon on the Common Insert bar at the top of the screen. (It looks like a small envelope). The Email Link dialog box opens. If you selected text before choosing the Email Link icon, that text is automatically entered into the Text box in the Email Link dialog box. 4. Enter or edit the text you want to represent the link on the page in the Text box, and then enter the e-mail address (without mailto:) in the Email box. The e-mail link is automatically set, and any text you added or edited