Dreamweaver CS5: The Missing Manual

Adding an Email Link

If you want to invite your site visitors to email you, an email link is the perfect solution. When someone clicks an email link, her email program launches automatically, and a new message opens with your email address already in the To field. Your guest can then just type her message and send it off.

An email link looks like this: mailto:[e-mail]. The first part (mailto) indicates the type of link, while the second part ([e-mail]) specifies the email address.

Note

Email links work only if the person who clicks the link has an email program set up and running on his computer. If someone visits your site from a computer at the public library, for example, he might not be able to send email. If this drawback troubles you, you can solicit feedback using a form (as discussed in Chapter 12), which has neither the limitations nor the easy setup of an email link.

You can create an email link much the way you create any other Dreamweaver link: by selecting some text or an image and typing the mailto address, as shown above, into the Link field in the Property inspector. To simplify this process, Dreamweaver offers a quick way to insert an email link:

1. Under the Insert panel’s Common category, click the “Email link” icon, which looks like an envelope (see Figure 5-7).

   Alternatively, choose Insert→Email link. Either way, if you’ve already typed the text (Email me!) on your web page, select it first. The Email Link dialog box opens (see Figure 5-9).

   Figure 5-9. The ...