HTML5 anchor Tag

The <a> tag defines an anchor. The HTML <a> tag is used for creating a hyperlink to another web page. The <a> tag is supported in all major browsers. All HTML links are created with the <a> tag. You can also use JavaScript to create links, but you'd only do this if you're trying to do something more complicated than HTML can handle.

An anchor can be used in two ways:

1. To create a link to another document, by using the href attribute.
2. To create a bookmark inside a document, by using the name attribute.

Attributes

HTML tags can contain one or more attributes. Attributes are added to a tag to provide the browser with more information about how the tag should appear or behave. Attributes consist of a name and a value separated by an equals (=) sign, with the value surrounded by double-quotes.

There are 3 kinds of attributes that you can add to your HTML tags: Element-specific, global, and event handler content attributes. The attributes that you can add to this tag are listed below.

Element-Specific Attributes

The following table shows the attributes that are specific to this tag/element.

Global Attributes

The following attributes are standard across all HTML 5 tags.

Event handler content attributes enable you to invoke a script from within your HTML. The script is invoked when a certain "event" occurs. Each event handler content attribute deals with a different event.

Here are the standard HTML 5 event handler content attributes.

Href- Specifies the destination of the target URL.

Internet Explorer

FireFox

target - Specifies where to open the target URL.

Possible values:

_blank- _blank opens the URL in a new browser window

_self- _selfLoads the URL in the current browser window.

_top- _top loads the URL into the parent frame (still within the current browser window). This is only applicable when using frames.

_parent- _parent loads the URL in the current browser window, but canceling out any frames. Therefore, if frames were being used, they aren't any longer.

_blank- If you set the target attribute to "_blank", the link will open in a new browser window or a new tab.

Internet Explorer

The below html code defines how to create a image link.

Now click on the image.

Internet Explorer

The following code creates an email link - when your users click on the link, the browser should open the default email client with the "to" and "subject" fields already populated.

Now click on the link.

Internet Explorer

It can confuse your users if your hyperlinks aren't underlined. A more usable solution would be only to apply this behavior to hyperlinks only when users hover over them.

Text rollovers

Use the a:hover selector

In this example we will see that hyperlink will be display green when we move mouse over link color will be orange and we click on the hyperlink color will be red.

Internet Explorer