Target | Anchor | Link Color

All the material used in this tutorial web are referenced from the Help Manual of Macromedia Dreamweaver 4 / MX / MX2004.

More About Links

There is more you can do with links than simply linking to another page:

[ 1 ] How to change where links open up their pages,
[ 2 ] How to link to another section on the same page, and
[ 3 ] How to change their color.

( 1 ) How to change where links open up their pages

Problem: If you don't change the link's properties, it will bring up the page it is linked to in the same window or frame that it is in. Basically, this is how 90% of the links on the internet work.

What we want: However, there are times when you want the linked page to open up in a new window or elsewhere in a frameset instead. When this occurs, you just have to change the link's properties.

This is quite simple and only involves one extra step. When creating the link, also choose the Target of the link.

TARGET="_self" If you want it to open up in the same window or frame that it is in, then choose _self. This is the default and therefore already implied, so you don't have to actually specify this. :::: Demo Link :::
TARGET="_blank" If you want it to open up in a new window, choose _blank. This will open up a new browser window so that both the original page and the new page are opened. :::: Demo Link :::
TARGET="_parent" Loads the link into the parent of the current frame. Simply speaking, it wipes out the frameset enclosing the frame containing the link, and loads the target document in its place. The distinction between _parent and _top arises in the case of nested framesets, where you might want to load the link into the next step up in the nesting order without wiping out any "outer" frameset(s). In a simple, non-nested frameset, _parent and _top do the same thing. :::: Demo Link :::
TARGET="_top" Wipes out all the frames in your window and then loads the new document into the window. Typically, you would use this whenever you provided a link leading to another site. If you didn't, the other site would be loaded into your frames, leading to an ugly and sometimes unusable screen layout. Unless you have a special reason not to, always use this when providing links outside your site. There's nothing more annoying for a user than being stuck in someone's frames :::: Demo Link :::