Topic:

<A> Anchor

Definition:

The anchor <A> element is used to define the start and/or destination of a hypertext link. In previous versions of HTML it provided the only means for defining destination anchors within documents, but you can now use any ID attribute as a destination anchor so that links can now be made to divisions, paragraphs, and most other document elements.

Attributes:

ID
An SGML identifier used as the target for hypertext links or for naming particular elements in associated style sheets. Identifiers are NAME tokens and must be unique within the scope of the current document. This attribute supersedes the "NAME" attribute, see below.

LANG
This is one of the ISO standard language abbreviations, e.g. "en.uk" for the variety of English spoken in the United Kingdom. It can be used by parsers to select language specific choices for quotation marks, ligatures and hyphenation rules. The language attribute is composed from the two letter language code from ISO 639, optionally followed by a period and a two letter country code from ISO 3166.

CLASS
This a space separated list of SGML NAME tokens and is used to subclass tag names. By convention, class names are interpreted hierarchically, with the most general class on the left and the most specific on the right, where classes are separated by a period. The CLASS attribute is most commonly used to attach a different style to some element, but it is recommended that where practical class names should be picked on the basis of the element's semantics, because this permitsother uses, such as restricting search through documents by matching on element class names. The conventions for choosing class names are outside the scope of this document.

HREF
The HREF attribute implies that the anchor acts as the start of a hypertext link. The destination is designated by the value of the HREF attribute, which is expressed using Universal Resource Identifier (URI) notation.

MD
Specifies a message digest or cryptographic checksum for the linked document designated by the HREF attribute. It is used when you want to be sure that a linked object is indeed the same one that the author intended, and hasn't been modified in any way. For instance, MD="md5:jV2OfH+nnXHU8bnkPAad/mSQlTDZ" specifies an MD5 checksum encoded as a base64 character string. The MD attribute is generally allowed for all elements which support URI based links.

NAME
This attribute is used to define a named anchor for use as the destination of hypertext links.
Note: the NAME attribute has been superceded by the ID attribute. User agents should include support for NAME to ensure backward compatibilitybackward compatibility with legacy documents produced using +.

SHAPE
This attribute is used within figures to define shaped hotzones for graphical hypertext links. Full details of how to use this feature may be found in the section on the FIGURE element. The attribute value is a string that takes of the following forms:

• "default" - Used to define a default link for the figure background.
• "circle x, y, r" - Where x and y define the center and r specifies the radius.
• "rect x, y, w, h" - Where x, y define the upper left corner and w, h define the width and height respectively
• "polygon x1, y1, x2, y2, ..." - Given n pairs of x, y coordinates, the polygon is closed by a line linking the n'th point to the first. Intersecting polygons use the non-zero winding number rule to determine if a point lies inside the polygon.

TITLE
This is informational only and describes the object specified with the HREF attribute. It can be used for object types that don't possess titles, such as graphics, plain text and Gopher menus.

REL
Used to describe the relationship of the linked object specified with the HREF attribute. The set of relationship names is not part of this specification, although "Path" and "Node" are reserved for future use with hypertext paths or guided tours. The REL attribute can be used to support searches for links serving particular relationships.

REV
This defines a reverse relationship. A link from document A to document B with REV=relation expresses the same relationship as a link from B to A with REL=relation. REV=made is sometimes used to identify the document's author, either the author's email address with a mailto URI, or a link to the author's home page. Tables of contents can use anchors with REV="ToC" to allow software to insert page numbers when printing hypertext documents.

Context:

<A> is legal within:
<ABBREV>,< ACRONYM>,< ADDRESS>,< AU>,< B>,< BANNER>,< BIG>,< BODYTEXT>,< CAPTION>,< CITE>,< CODE>,< CREDIT>,< DD>,< DEL>,< DFN>,< DIV>,< DT>,< EM>,< FIGTEXT>,< FN>,< FORM>,< H1>,< H2>,< H3>,< H4>,< H5>,< H6>,< I>,< INS>,< KBD>,< LANG>,< LH>,< LI>,< NOTE>,< P>,< PERSON>,< PRE>,< Q>,< S>,< SAMP>,< SMALL>,< STRONG>,< SUB>,< SUP>,< TD>,< TH>,< TT>,< U>,< VAR>

The following markup can be used within <A>
<A>, <ABBREV>, <ACRONYM>, <AU>, <B>, <BIG>, <BR>, <CITE>, <CODE>, <DEL>, <DFN>, <EM>, <H1>, <H2>, <H3>, <H4>, <H5>, <H6>, <I>, <IMG>, <INS>, <KBD>, <LANG>, <MATH>, <PERSON>, <Q>, <S>, <SAMP>, <SMALL>, <STRONG>, <SUB>, <SUP>, <TAB>, <TT>, <U>, <VAR>

Suggested style/usage:

Close Tag: REQUIRED

Example:

<A HREF="http://impactonline.com/">IMPACT Online</A>