Working with Hyperlinks

Locating the Web Resources for your Links

Allocate enough time to locate excellent resources. This can be time consuming, but it is well worth the effort. (If you think it takes a long time to find just what you need, just think how long it would take if you had to create the resource from scratch!) If you have trouble locating age appropriate resources, try looking at school sites with links to resources that already align with the curriculum. Many links to excellent resources can be found at  Techssentials  (Look under Tech Integration). Try using Subject Indexes in stead of search engines, and don't forget to try Kid search tools. Check these Search Tools  for help. 

Librarians Index to the Internet  has carefully reviewed, excellent resources.

Yahooligans works well for locating resources for younger audiences

After you find sites that might be useful, create a shortcut to the site.

How to create a shortcut for a website:

Use your browser to locate the specific website.

Left click on the tiny icon in the address URL text box. Hold the button down and drag it to your desktop.

Tip: If you are locating websites to bookmark for instructional or research purposes create folders by topics on your desktop and drag the addresses (as per above) and drop into the respective folders. The folders may then be saved in your folder/directory on the server or copied to a disk.

How Links Work

All links have 2 parts:

Link Source -- text, button, or picture that a visitor clicks to activate the link. When you point to a link on a page, the pointer changes from an arrow to a pointing finger. Usually text for a link is underlined
URL -- the address of the page that the link takes the visitor to view.

How to create a link to another web page:

  1. Choose the page and type the text that you want to be the link source.
  2. Select the text
  3. Click Insert Hyperlink button on the Standard Toolbar
  4. If you already know the URL of the page, you can type it in the Address text box (don't forget the http:// part)
  5. If you don't know the URL, click the Browse the Web button just to the right of the Look in list. (This should open the web browser -- if it doesn't, just get online)
  6. Surf to the page and when the page you want to link to is in view, press Alt+Tab to get back to the Hyperlink dialog box.
  7. Click OK to add the link.

If you want a picture to be the link. Select the picture (instead of text) and follow steps 3-7.

How to link to files:

If you have already created content you want to have available from your web page (and you don't want to convert it to a web page), you can offer the file for your visitors to download. Any kind of file can be downloaded (documents, pictures, sound, or video clips). (It's sometimes good idea to give visitors added  information such as the file type and size of file.)

  1. Choose the page and type the text you want to be the link source.
  2. Select the text.
  3. Click the Insert Hyperlink button on the Standard Toolbar.
  4. Locate the folder containing the file to which you want to link.
  5. Click the file name to select it.
  6. Click OK

Linking to your own web pages:

  1. Create both web pages.
  2. Open the page and select the link source.
  3. Click Insert Hyperlink button
  4. Use Current Folder and Recent Files buttons, or the Look in list and locate the folder where the page is stored.
  5. Click the name of the page you are link to
  6. Click OK

Advice:

Try to plan your site on paper first. Build all your pages together as a web site. This lets you manage navigation bars to link to your pages.