Using Wordlink

Wordlink links webpages word-by-word to online dictionaries. In the wordlinked page, if a word appears with a black background when you hover over it, then you can click on it to look it up in a dictionary - or in fact, in a selection of dictionaries, because Wordlink works in conjunction with another facility, Multidict, which enables you to switch easily between dictionaries.

In the wordlinked document, pre-existing links will still work. And in fact they will take you to a wordlinked version of the linked page so that you have the benefit of word-by-word links to online dictionaries in the new page too. However, if you do not need the pre-existing links and would prefer instead to be able to look up all words including link words in the online dictionaries, simply tick the “Remove existing links” box.

Some types of page which Wordlink will not generally work on: (1) Very “flashy” webpages using lots of Flash or plugins; (2) Pages which lie behind login systems. So unfortunately, Wordlink will not currently work with social network sites or VLE’s.

If you are using Wordlink in “Splitscreen” mode, you can drag the vertical boundary between the frames to give either more or less space to the dictionary frame, according to what suits your screen size and the compactness or otherwise of the particular dictionary you are using.

These example pages illustrate how Wordlink works, and how to link to Wordlinked pages.

For web authors

You can help readers who are not fluent in your language by providing a link to Wordlink on your pages. Specify the source language (sl) and the page address (url) as parameters in the link to Wordlink as follows: href="http://multidict.net/wordlink/?sl=…&url=…"

Instead of specifying the actual address, you can also simply say “url=referer”, in which case the url is taken from the address of the calling page. This also has the merit that the link will continue to work if the page is moved. However, the sending of referer information can be switched off in browsers, so this method is not 100% reliable