Links view
The Links view (Window > Show View > Links) shows the files in your projects, the links between them and the characteristics of those links. This view helps you distinguish between different types of links, shows you the number of links to target files and indicates where documents have broken links or links to external files.
The Links view is like the Project Explorer view in that you can open files by double-clicking on the file icons it displays. Similarly, the Project Explorer view shows you a file system hierarchical view of your project and the Links view shows you the hierarchical relationship of your files, based on the links between them.
When files contain links to other files, they can be described as having parent-child relationships. When a file is in focus in the Links view, you can see the hierarchical relationships between it and the files to which it links. You can look at the parents (the files to the left) that contain links to the file in focus and the children (the files to the right) that are the targets of the links.
Hypertext links in HTML files are displayed as arrows between the files in the Links view. Hypertext links can be divided into different types. The Links view shown here displays examples of the most common kinds of links:
-
- The arrow with two lines through it indicates that the link is to a file
outside the Web content folder.
The
icon indicates that the link
is to a cascading stylesheet. -
- The arrow with a number on it indicates the number of times the file in
focus (index.html) links to the file to which it points.
The
icon indicates
that the link is to a graphic. Links to graphics are sometimes referred to
as an embedded links because they are rendered as part of the same HTTP request
(appear on the same page). -
- The arrow with a question mark on it indicates that the validity of the
link cannot be verified.
The
icon indicates that the link is one of a number of industry
standard link types. The
icon indicates that the link is to a mailing address.
Links to file types that are not recognized are represented by the
.
In the Links view, the link to the HTML file represented by the
icon appears
to be broken, but a file called whatsnew is shown in the
Project Explorer view to be in the same directory as the file in focus. When
you create a file in your project using the file creation wizard, if you do
not specify a file extension, .html will be appended to the filename. In this
case, the actual name of the file uses the four letter extension html as shown
in the Project Explorer view, but the link specified in index.html uses
the three letter file extension htm. Therefore, the link is to a file that
does not exist in the project. Broken links are also displayed in the Tasks
list and are indicated by the
icon in the first column.