Arg! I almost forgot to cover links. So I have added an extra page (this one) to cover links. The first website I saw, back in the mid 80s was almost all text with lots of blue underscored text. This blue underscored text I was told was hyper-linked text and linked to other websites containing more hyper- linked text to yet other websites. This ever expanding web of hyper- links was known as the World Wide Web. But I am sure you already knew all this. When I first started creating my on-line Xara tutorials, I wrote my own HTML scripts. These were very basic. Pictures could be left right or centered in a block of text. And hyper-links were added using a bit of script such as <a href="http://www.xaraxone.com">The Xara Xone</a> This added a link like this to the text The Xara Xone. Fortunately today we can place images anywhere we wish and link to other websites, anchors, photos, e-mail addresses, PDF files, YouTube Videos, you name it. And Xara makes it easy and does all the coding. Shown above is the Link section of the Web Properties menu. You can access it instantly via the Link Properties icon shown to the left. You can link almost anything to anything else. But the most common form of links are text links and buttons. I will cover the options shown in the screen capture above. 1. Link to Website or e-mail Address Select some text or an object such as a button, or a photo, and enter the address. Press Apply to add the link. Check Correct Automatically and Xara will convert www.xaraxone.com to the correct HTML format,  http://www.xaraxone.com. Or key in gary@gwpriester.com and Xara automatically converts this to mailto:gary@gwpriester.com. The mailto: tag launches the visitors e-mail program when they click the link. TIP: Instead of linking your actual e-mail address, link text such as Send e-mail to your e-mail address. Xara encodes the actual e- mail address to effectively hide the address from automated “bots” that search out e-mail addresses to add to spam lists. I think we can all agree there is too much of that already! 2. Link to:... You can link text, graphics or buttons to a specific page on your website. You can also link to the next or previous page (or if you are creating a presentation) the Next or Previous Step. You might for example create two arrow buttons to let your visitors go to the next or previous page and link the arrow buttons accordingly. The benefit of this is the buttons know what the next or previous page is, even if you repeat them on all pages or delete or add a page. TIP: You can also add an automatic link to the top of the page by adding the pound sign # in the web address text entry box (covered in item 1). This forces the browser to reload the page and go to the top at the same time. 3. Link to Anchor An anchor is a specific place in the text or on the page, or an image that you can go directly to. For example, say you have a very long page of text with subheads and you want your visitor to go directly to a specific subhead. If your subhead is separate and not part of the existing block of text, then select the text, click the yellow Names tag on the Infobar and give your subhead a name you will recognize, such as “Roses are red”. At the top of your page, have a bullet list of all the subheads. Select a subhead, select the appropriate text from the Link to Anchor drop down list and press Apply. TIP: If you want to add an anchor to a large continuous block of text such as this article, place a rectangle over the area you wish to anchor to, name the rectangle and make it 98% transparent. NOTE: If the anchored text is in the current screen, the first anchor on the page, let’s say, then nothing will happen. 4. Link to File You can add a download link to a PDF file, a Word document, an AVI file and other file types. Browse to the location of the file (it can be on your desktop, or on your hard drive), select the file and press Open to select the file, and then Apply. Xara creates and places a copy the file to the index_htm_files folder when you publish your site. The visitor to your website clicks the link and then typically has the option to Open or Save the file. 5. Link to a Pop-up Layer This link links to the content on a pop-up layer. You could link a small image or text to a larger image that you have placed on a pop-up layer. I have a simple gallery format that I make available for artists in my community. The page shows 8 thumbnail images that are linked to 8 different pop up layers. When the visitor clicks an image, the layer instantly appears with a photo or image. You can see this in action here. NOTE: You can link to a pop-up layer using the Web Properties  Mouse-Over > Show Pop-up Layer link. This shows the layer instantly when the cursor is over the link and the layer closes as soon as the mouse is moved off of the link. 6. Open Link In If you link to a web address you can specify how that link with open the linked page. Most commonly, you will use the New Window (_blank) option. If you link to www.newpage.com, most browsers will either open a new tab, or move to the the linked page and close your own page. If you select Open in > New Window (_blank), a new browser window opens and when your visitor closes the new window, your site is still there and you have not lost your visitor. A link is worth a thousand words. I copied the descriptions of the Open In options and linked to www.xaraxone.com using the described options. This should visually demonstrate how each of these links works. (I have never understood the differences anyway, so maybe this way we can both learn how they work). Press the Back arrow to return to this page after you have previewed each link. New window (_blank) Open the link in a new browser window. Same frame (_self) Open the link in this frame (the frame that contains this object). Parent frame (_parent) Open the link into the parent window or frameset that contains this frame. Same window (_top) Open the link into the main browser window, replacing any existing frames. I can’t say that I see any difference. But then maybe I am just dense. There are so many things to cover and I don’t want you to overload so let me just cover one more feature that you may find of interest and that is Repel Text Under and Repelling and Anchoring. These are similar so it helps to understand how they work. Any object that is placed over a text area (paragraph text) can be set to repel the text that is UNDER the object. Simply right click on the object and select Repel Text Under. By default, the text will be offset 5 pixels to the side and top and bottom. If you select Repelling and Anchoring from the pop-up menu you have more options as shown on the left. You can specify a custom offset distance and you can click the lock icon to specify a different horizontal and vertical offset distance. I like 0-2px for vertical offset as it is tighter. You can also move the graphic(s) with the text. If you modify the text area, by adding more text, removing text, adjusting the text size, or resizing the text area, the anchored graphic retains its position. You can anchor an object to text that is outside of the text area. In this case, the anchored graphic will also move along with the text. The Help menu does not explain the Move Vertically Only option but if we take the literal interpretation, we can assume the anchored object can only move up or down. Agree? Disagree? Discuss. The Link Options