Absolute and Relative Links

Absolute Links

Let's make an absolute link to the UMD home page. Absolute links use the whole "http://..." business and are needed for pages outside of your site.

  1. select the text "link to the UMD Home Page"
  2. go to the "Properties" panel
  3. click in the text entry window called "Link"
  4. type in the url of UMD which is http://www.d.umn.edu/
  5. hit the "enter" (Windows) or "return" (Mac OS) key

You now have a link!

Absolute links are needed when linking to another site. You may use them to link to pages within your own site, but there is another way that is simpler and more powerful.

Relative Links

Relative links should be used when linking to other pages within your site. An example would be a link from your home page to your "Favorite Recipes" page.

Create a new file to be called "Favorite Recipes". A relative link will be made to this file.

  1. go to the "File" menu
  2. choose "New..."
  3. in the dialog box click on the "General" tab
  4. in the "Category:" column choose "Basic Page"
  5. in the "Basic page:" column choose "HTML"
  6. click "Create"
  7. give the page the title "Favorite Recipes"
  8. make "Favorite Recipes" the heading 1 for the page
  9. save the page as "FavoriteRecipes.html"
  10. close the page

Now create the link to your "Favorite Recipes" page.

  1. select the text "link to my Favorite Recipes Page"
  2. go to the "Properties" panel
  3. click on the folder icon to the right of the "Link" text box called "Browse for File"
  4. browse to the file "FavoriteRecipes.html"
  5. double-click on the file name to create the link

To view a web page of the completed project follow this link to the completed project page.

If you have a question about Dreamweaver, don't forget to try Dreamweaver's help option. Look for the help choices under the menu "Help".

Let's move on to "Naming Files for the Web."