The Politics of Linking

Maintaining Links to Other Sites

Remember that other people may move their pages around or even take them off-line altogether. You should check your links periodically to make sure they still work.

You may find it easier to maintain your external links if you groups them together. This is why many people have a page on their site dedicated just to links.

Link Titles

You can use the TITLE attribute (not to be confused with the TITLE element) to add a little extra information about a link, which a user may see when they position their mouse over a link. For example, this link has a title. Be aware that not all browsers support this feature.

Style of Linked Text

Don't say "To read the full report, click here."

Instead, say "You may read the full report."

Linking to Big Stuff

Remember that many users may be accessing the Internet via a slow modem. As a courtesy, you should warn them when linking to big multimedia files.

For example: "You may read the full report [63 Kb]."

How big is big? Anything over 50 Kb should probably be flagged.


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