Dreamweaver CS6: 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, his email program launches automatically, and a new message opens with your email address already in the “To:” field. Your guest can then just type his 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. Likewise, if he’s using a web-based email client, like Gmail, clicking an email link won’t open his Gmail page in a web browser.

You can create an email link much the way you create any other Dreamweaver link: by selecting text or an image and typing the mailto address, as shown above, into the Property Inspector’s Link field. 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 4-7).

   Alternatively, choose Insert→Email Link. Either way, if you already typed the text (Email me!) on your web page, select it first. The Email Link dialog box opens (see Figure 4-9).

   Figure 4-9. The Email Link dialog box lets you ...