The <a href> Tag in HTML 5
The <a href> tag is used to define a hypertext link. It is one of the tags for interactive content in HTML. If a user clicks on the link, the referenced document will be loaded by the browser or other web client. Only the <a href> version of the anchor tag is described here since the <a name> version is no longer used (see Changes in HTML 5 below)
<a rel="nofollow" href="index.pdf">...</a>
Breadcrumb trail using <a> tags
A series of inline hypertext links can be used to create a breadcrumb trail:
This is an actual working demo of the <a href> example code below.
HTML Anchors
Defining the target of a link within a page
The href
attribute of the <a> tag can reference the id
attribute of one of the HTML tags to link to a specific point within a web page, automatically scrolling the browser window if necessary to make that section of the web page appear in the currently visible area. To specify the target location, include a hash symbol ("#
") followed by the id
of the target location in the href
attribute of the <a>
tag. The URLs of bookmarks or favorites can also point to specific locations in a web page.
The tags that are involved in creating the document outline, which include the <section> tag, <hgroup> tag and heading tag would be some examples of good places for HTML anchors:
<section id="main-section-a"> <h1>Section A</h1> ... <hgroup id="implied-section-b"> <h2>Section B</h2> <h3>...</h3> </hgroup> ... <h2 id="implied-section-c">Section C</h2> ... </section>
<a name/> and <a id/> anchor tags
The <a/> tag was originally used to define a fixed point (hence the name anchor and element type name a) in a document for the target of a hypertext link. However, starting with HTML version 4 (1997), any HTML element can be used as an anchor simply by including an id
attribute on the element start tag or the standalone tag of a void element. From http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/links.html#h-12.2.3:
The id attribute may be used to create an anchor at the start tag of any element (including the A element).
Note that as a result of how the HTML specifications have evolved, the <a> tag should not be used as an anchor, and in order to avoid confusion, probably should not be called the anchor tag
.
<link> tag for links to related documents
In addition to the <a> tag for hypertext links, the HTML <link> tag can be used to reference other things, such as profiles of the web page author(s), related to the current HTML web page.