How do i make a link in Gnome (2.5x)?

[Schmolch]

I have a folder with lots of html-files in it.
Its a book, and i want to link the index-file to the desktop, so i can just click it and read.
However, clicking the link does not open the index-file in $home/Desktop/book/ but the link itself, it seems its just a copy of the html from $home/Desktop/book.

First i tought "hey its a gnome-dev-release, its probably just a bug, ill do the link myself" and i did "ln -s $home/Desktop/book/index.html $home/Desktop/link" but still, Galeon does not show me the index.html from $home/Desktop/book but just the link itself as if it were a copy and not a link.

After a little playing around i noticed, that opening the link i made with nautilus or by myself works only if i use konqueror to open it.
Galeon, Epiphany and Mozilla all open the link as if it were a copy of the file.

I hope the problem is understandable, sorry for my bad english.

Can anyone reproduce or comment this behaviour?