Authoring Tips: Linking on Connexions

What's an educational resource without copious amounts of cross-referencing? Not much, I say! Luckily, we've got you covered.

The <link> tag can create hyperlinks to webpages, files uploaded to your module, other modules or collections, specific portions of other modules and collections, and even specific versions of other modules or collections, or any combination of the above. Sound like a lot? We'll break it down for you.

The hyperlinks we are all familiar with whisk you away to a new webpage. This is easy enough to do in Connexions, where all you need to do is specify the @url attribute, like so:

Here's a link to a great <link url="http://cnx.org/">open educational resource repository</link>.

where what you see is:

Here's a link to a great open educational resource repository.

The fun starts when you want to link to other resources in the Connexions repository, for which you can use special Connexions attributes, like in these examples:

<link document="m12345">some text</link>

links you to a specific module or collection. You can find the module ID (the m12345 number) or the collection ID (a col12345 number) in the URL bar of the content you are linking to, or you can find it on the metadata page (a link to it is at the bottom of the page).

<link document="m12345" resource="FileName.png">some text</link>

links you directly to a file (in this case, named "FileName.png") that has been uploaded to module m12345. If you want to link to a file that you have uploaded to your own module, just leave out the document="m12345". This is hands-down the easiest way to point readers to included files; we'll be talking about other ways (like embedding) in the coming weeks.

<link document="m12345" target-id="eip-987">some text</link>

links you to a specific element in module m12345. (Again, if you want to link to the module you are editing, you can leave off the document="m12345".) Pretty much every element in your module (paragraphs, figures, sections, etc.) requires a unique ID. If you are using Edit-in-Place, or if you imported a Word document or LaTeX file to create your module, Connexions generates random unique IDs for you. You can find them by clicking on the element in Edit-in-Place to open it for editing. The target-id is in the upper left corner; this one is "delete_me":

<link document="m12345" version="1.2">some text</link>

links to version 1.2 of modules m12345, just in case the last overhaul of the module removed the information you wanted to link to. (You can find a list of all past versions through the link to the metadata at the bottom of the content.) And my favorites:

<link document="m12345" version="1.2" target-id="eip-987">some text</link>

<link document="m12345" version="1.2" resource="FileName.png">some text</link>

...because who wouldn't want to link to a specific portion (or a specific file) of a specific version of a specific module in the Connexions repository?

So there you go. No excuses for not linking to your sources! As we discussed last week, you can find complete information about the <link> tag in our eip-help at http://cnx.org/eip-help/link.