Disabling the underline for the anchor tag, <a>, which is normally associated with hyperlinked text, is one modification commonly included in style sheets.

To disable the underline on the anchor tag, follow these steps:

The Style Definition window closes, and any style changes instantly take effect on your page. If you have any previously defined links, the underline disappears from them.

Now, when viewed through a browser, any links that you insert on your page still function as links—the user's pointer still changes into a pointing hand, and the links are active—but no underline appears.

One variation on this technique is to make the underline appear only when the mouse rolls over the link. To accomplish this variation, define a CSS rule for the a:hover selector and set the Decoration to Underline.

Internet addresses get more complicated every day. Trying to remember them all correctly and avoid typos can make the Web designer's job unnecessarily difficult. You can use the Dreamweaver Assets panel's URLs category to drag-and-drop the trickiest URLs with ease.

The Assets panel lists URLs that are already referenced somewhere within your site. If you want to link to the same URL again, just drag it from the Assets panel.

The Assets panel lists only full Internet addresses—whether to files (such as http://www.idest.com/dreamweaver/) or to email addresses (such as mailto:[email protected]). Document- or site-relative links are not listed as Assets. To assign a link to a document- or site-relative page, use one of the other linking methods discussed in this chapter, such as pointing to a file.

To assign a URL from the Assets panel, follow these steps:

If you don't select text or an image before dragging the URL from the Assets panel, a link is still created in your document. In this situation, Dreamweaver uses the URL name as the hotspot.

The Edit button on the Assets panel is unavailable for the URLs category. Links cannot be edited; they can only be applied as shown in the preview area.

Dreamweaver provides an alternative method of identifying a link—pointing to it. By using the Point to File icon on the Property inspector, you can quickly fill in the Link text box by dragging your mouse to any existing named anchor or file visible in the Dreamweaver environment. With the Point to File feature, you can avoid browsing through folder after folder as you search for a file you can clearly see onscreen.

You can point to another open document, to a document in another frame in the same window, or to any named anchor visible on the screen. If your desired link is a named anchor located farther down the page, Dreamweaver automatically scrolls to find it. You can even point to a named anchor in another document, and Dreamweaver will enter the full syntax correctly. Named anchors are covered in detail later in this chapter.

Perhaps one of the slickest ways to apply the Point to File feature is to use it in tandem with the Files panel. The Files panel lists all the existing files in any given Web site, and when both it and the Document window are onscreen, you can quickly point to any file.

Pointing to a file uses what could be called a drag-and-release mouse technique, as opposed to the more ordinary point-and-click or drag-and-drop method. To select a new link using the Point to File icon, follow these steps:

Three types of URLs are used as links: absolute addresses, document-relative addresses, and site-root–relative addresses. The following list briefly looks at these address types.

A Webmaster must often perform the tedious but necessary task of verifying the links on all the Web pages in a site. Because of the Web's fluid nature, links can work one day and break the next. Dreamweaver includes powerful link-checking and link-updating capabilities.

Dreamweaver can generate reports for broken links, for external links (links to files outside your site), and to orphaned files (files in your site with no links to them). You can check links for an open document, for all documents in a site, or for selected documents in the Files panel.

To check links in the current document, choose File

All these methods open the Link Checker panel, displaying the results of the link check. In the Show drop-down list at the top of the Link Checker panel, select the report you want to see: Broken links, External links, or Orphaned Files. The Orphaned Files report is only available if you check the entire site. The broken links report verifies not only clickable hotspots to other HTML files, but also references to graphics and other external files.

You can save the link report by clicking the Save Report button on the Link Checker panel, or by right-clicking (Control+clicking) in the panel and choosing Save Results from the pop-up menu. To clear the Link Checker panel, right-click (Control+click) in the Link Checker panel and choose Clear Results.

Double-clicking an entry in the Link Checker panel opens the document where the error occurred, with the broken link selected. You can quickly correct the link using the Property inspector or by choosing Modify

One of the major advantages of using named anchors is the almost instantaneous response viewers receive when they link to named anchors from the same page. The browser just scrolls to the particular place in the document because the entire page is already loaded. For long text documents, this capability is an invaluable timesaver.

After you have placed a named anchor in your document, you can link to the anchor. You can create more than one named anchor in your document before adding links to the anchors. To create a link to a named anchor in the same document, follow these steps:

In Dreamweaver, you can also use the Point to File icon to choose a named anchor link. If your named anchor is in the same document, just drag the Point to File icon to the named anchor symbol. When you release the mouse, the address for the named anchor is inserted into the Link text box. If the named anchor is on the same page, but offscreen, Dreamweaver automatically scrolls the Document window as you drag toward the edge. In Windows, the closer you move to the edge, the faster Dreamweaver scrolls. Dreamweaver returns the screen to your original location, with the new link at the top of the screen after you release the mouse button.

In long documents with a table of contents or index linking to a number of named anchors, it's common practice—and a good idea—to place a link back to the top of the page after every screen or every topic. This technique enables your users to return to the menu quickly and pick another topic without having to manually scroll all the way back.

If your table of contents is on a separate page from the topics of your site, you can use named anchors to send the viewer anywhere on a new page. The technique is the same as that already explained for placing named anchors, but with one minor difference when it comes to linking. Instead of placing a hash mark and name to denote the named anchor, you must first include the URL of the linked page.

Suppose you want to call the disclaimer section of a legal page from your table of contents. You could insert something like the following in the Link text box of the Property inspector:

legal.htm#disclaimer

This link, when activated, first loads the referenced Web page (legal.htm) and then goes directly to the named anchor place (#disclaimer). Figure 10-7 shows how you enter this in the Property inspector. Keep in mind that you can use any form of addressing prior to the hash mark and named anchor.

Figure 10-7. You can link to any part of a separate Web page by using named anchors.

One of the more obscure uses for named anchors comes into play when you are trying to use Dreamweaver's JavaScript Behavior feature. Because JavaScript needs to work with a particular type of tag to perform onMouseOver and other events, a useful trick is to create a null link—a link that doesn't actually link to anywhere.

You create a null link by marking some text or an image with a link to #nowhere. You can use any name for the nonexistent named anchor. In fact, you don't even have to use a name—you can just use a hash mark (#) by itself.

There's one problem to note, however: Netscape browsers have a tendency to send the page to the top if a link of this type is used. Many programmers have begun to substitute an empty call to a JavaScript function instead, such as javascript:;. Dreamweaver itself now uses javascript:; instead of # when a new behavior is attached to an image.