It is important that you check and verify that your links work. Links are not active within Dreamweaver; that is, you cannot open a linked document by clicking the link in the Document window. You can check any type of link by displaying the page in a browser. Using a browser is the only available validation option for absolute or external links and e-mail links. For relative or internal links, Dreamweaver provides the Link Checker feature. Use the Link Checker to check internal links in a document, a folder, or an entire site.

A large Web site can contain hundreds of links that can change over time. Dreamweaver’s Link Checker searches for broken links and unreferenced files in a portion of a local site or throughout an entire local site. This feature is limited, however, because it verifies internal links only. A list of external links is compiled, but not verified. As previously discussed, external links must be checked through a browser.

The Link Checker does have advantages, however. When you use this feature, the Link Checker displays a statistical report that includes information about broken links, orphaned files, and external links. An orphaned file is a file that is not connected to any page within the Web site. The orphaned file option is for informational purposes only. The orphaned file report, however, is particularly valuable for a large site, because it displays a list of all files that are not part of the Web site. Deleting unused files from a Web site increases disk space and streamlines your site. You can use the Link Checker to check links throughout your entire site from any Web page within the site. After you run the Link Checker, you can fix broken links in the Property inspector or directly in the Link Checker panel. In this exercise, you fix a broken link in the Property inspector.

The following steps show how to use the Link Checker to verify the internal links for the natl_parks.htm page. The link to the Colorado Parks Slide Show is changed from slideshow.htm to slide_show.htm intentionally to illustrate how the Link Checker works and how to make corrections. Your results may be different from the ones shown below. The following steps illustrate how to change a file name and to verify internal links using the Link Checker.