HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide, 5th Edition

Creating Hyperlinks

Use the HTML/XHTML <a> tag to create links to other documents and to name anchors for fragment indentifiers within documents.

The <a> Tag

You will use the <a> tag most commonly with its href attribute to create a hypertext link, or hyperlink, to another place in the same document or to another document. In these cases, the current document is the source of the link; the value of the href attribute, a URL, is the target.^[42]

The other way you can use the <a> tag is with the name attribute, to mark a hyperlink target, or fragment identifier, in a document. This method, although part of the HTML 4 and XHTML standards, is slowly succumbing to the id attribute, which lets you mark nearly any element, including paragraphs, divisions, forms, and so on, as a hyperlink target.

<a>

Function

Defines anchors within a text flow

Attributes

accesskey, charset, class, coords, dir, href, hreflang, id, lang, name, onBlur, onClick, onDblClick, onFocus, onKeyDown, onKeyPress, onKeyUp, onMouseDown, onMouseMove, onMouseOut, onMouseOver, onMouseUp, rel, rev, shape, style, tabindex, target, title, type

End tag

</a>; never omitted

Contains

a_content

Used in

text

The standards let you use both the name and href attributes within a single <a> tag, defining a link to another document and a fragment identifier within the current document. We recommend against this, since it overloads a single tag with multiple functions and some browsers may not be able to handle it. Instead, use two <a> tags ...