According to this answer, I'm supposed to be able to style my anchor tag as follows.
<a href="#Url.Action("Index", "Home")"
style="background: no-repeat url(../../Images/Logo.png) 0 0"></a>
However, I noticed that it doesn't work as expected because the image doesn't appear on the screen. However, if I create an image tag inside, it does.
<a href="#Url.Action("Index", "Home")">
<img src="../../Images/Logo.png" />
</a>
I'd prefer using the second approach but I'm afraid that it's old-school and that today it's recommended to use styling for adding images and not mark-up. So, naturally I want to embrace the new ways.
What am I doing wrong?
You need to set the style to display: block; and give it a width and a height.
Example:
Hope this helps
Ensure your <a> tag is styled to be large enough to display the image. By default this tag is displayed inline and you have given no content between the <a> and </a> tags, so therefore the browser will allocate no screen space at all for this element.
I suggest adding some rules to your inline style attribute (well it is better still in a stylesheet to be honest):-
<a href="#Url.Action("Index", "Home")" style="
background: no-repeat url(../../Images/Logo.png) 0 0;
display: inline-block;
width: 30px;
height: 20px"></a>
Just replace the 30px and 20px with the actual dimensions of your image.
I ran into a situation where I have a link that is set as a display:block. I'm trying to fill the background-color property with a color, but only behind the text; instead, it's filling the entire background of that row, which is logical, but not what I want. How can I fill only the background of the text without being an inline element? Or is this not possible?
HTML:
mylink
CSS:
a {
display:block;
background-color:blue;
}
If you need to keep the link as a block, you can wrap the text in a <span> and apply the background colour to that.
Simple code would be something like this:
<a href="#" style="display: block">
Hello<span style="background: blue; color: white">blue</span>link
</a>
You can then add padding and other style to the span tag.
You can add a ID tag to the span if its a special once off thing for specific styling.
Here is what I am trying to accomplish in HTML/CSS:
I have images in different heights and widths, but they are all under 180x235. So what I want to do is create a div with border and vertical-align: middle them all. I have successfully done that but now I am stuck on how to properly a href link the entire div.
Here is my code:
<div id="parentdivimage" style="position:relative;width:184px;height:235px;border-width:2px;border-color:black;border-style:solid;text-align:center;">
<div id="childdivimage" style="position:absolute;top:50%;height:62px;margin-top:-31px;">
<img src="myimage.jpg" height="62" width="180">
</div>
</div>
Please note that for the sake of copy pasting here easily, the style code is inline.
I read somewhere that I can simply add another parent div on top of the code and then do a href inside that. However, based on some research it won't be valid code.
So to sum it up again, I need the entire div (#parentdivimage) to be a href link.
UPDATE 06/10/2014: using div's inside a's is semantically correct in HTML5.
You'll need to choose between the following scenarios:
<a href="http://google.com">
<div>
Hello world
</div>
</a>
which is semantically incorrect, but it will work.
<div style="cursor: pointer;" onclick="window.location='http://google.com';">
Hello world
</div>
which is semantically correct but it involves using JS.
<a href="http://google.com">
<span style="display: block;">
Hello world
</span>
</a>
which is semantically correct and works as expected but is not a div any more.
Why don't you strip out the <div> element and replace it with an <a> instead? Just because the anchor tag isn't a div doesn't mean you can't style it with display:block, a height, width, background, border, etc. You can make it look like a div but still act like a link. Then you're not relying on invalid code or JavaScript that may not be enabled for some users.
Do it like this:
Parentdivimage should have specified width and height, and its position should be:
position: relative;
Just inside the parentdivimage, next to other divs that parent contains you should put:
<span class="clickable"></span>
Then in css file:
.clickable {
height: 100%;
width: 100%;
left: 0;
top: 0;
position: absolute;
z-index: 1;
}
The span tag will fill out its parent block which is parentdiv, because of height and width set to 100%. Span will be on the top of all of surrounding elements because of setting z-index higher than other elements. Finally span will be clickable, because it's inside of an 'a' tag.
Going off of what Surreal Dreams said, it's probably best to style the anchor tag in my experience, but it really does depend on what you are doing. Here's an example:
Html:
<div class="parent-div">
Test
Test
Test
</div>
Then the CSS:
.parent-div {
width: 200px;
}
a {
display:block;
background-color: #ccc;
color: #000;
text-decoration:none;
padding:10px;
margin-bottom:1px;
}
a:hover {
background-color: #ddd;
}
http://jsbin.com/zijijuduqo/1/edit?html,css,output
Two things you can do:
Change #childdivimage to a span element, and change #parentdivimage to an anchor tag. This may require you to add some more styling to get things looking perfect. This is preffered, since it uses semantic markup, and does not rely on javascript.
Use Javascript to bind a click event to #parentdivimage. You must redirect the browser window by modifying window.location inside this event. This is TheEasyWayTM, but will not degrade gracefully.
I'm surprised no one suggested this simple trick so far! (denu does something similar though.)
If you want a link to cover an entire div, an idea would be to create an empty <a> tag as the first child:
<div class="covered-div">
<a class="cover-link" href="/my-link"></a>
<!-- other content as usual -->
</div>
div.covered-div {
position: relative;
}
a.cover-link {
position: absolute;
top: 0;
bottom: 0;
left: 0;
right: 0;
}
This works especially great when using <ul> to create block sections or slideshows and you want the whole slide to be a link (instead of simply the text on the slide). In the case of an <li> it's not valid to wrap it with an <a> so you'd have to put the cover link inside the item and use CSS to expand it over the entire <li> block.
Do note that having it as the first child means it will make other links or buttons inside the text unreachable by clicks. If you want them to be clickable, then you'd have to make it the last child instead.
In the case of the original question:
<div id="parentdivimage" style="position:relative;width:184px;height:235px;border-width:2px;border-color:black;border-style:solid;text-align:center;">
<a class="cover-link" href="/my-link"></a> <!-- Insert this empty link here and use CSS to expand it over the entire div -->
<div id="childdivimage" style="position:absolute;top:50%;height:62px;margin-top:-31px;">
<img src="myimage.jpg" height="62" width="180">
</div>
<!-- OR: it can also be here if the childdivimage divs should have their own clickable links -->
</div>
Make the div of id="childdivimag" a span instead, and wrap that in an a element. As the span and img are in-line elements by default this remains valid, whereas a div is a block level element, and therefore invalid mark-up when contained within an a.
put display:block on the anchor element. and/or zoom:1;
but you should just really do this.
a#parentdivimage{position:relative; width:184px; height:235px;
border:2px solid #000; text-align:center;
background-image:url("myimage.jpg");
background-position: 50% 50%;
background-repeat:no-repeat; display:block;
text-indent:-9999px}
<a id="parentdivimage">whatever your alt attribute was</a>
This can be done in many ways.
a. Using nested inside a tag.
<a href="link1.html">
<div> Something in the div </div>
</a>
b. Using the Inline JavaScript Method
<div onclick="javascript:window.location.href='link1.html' ">
Some Text
</div>
c. Using jQuery inside tag
HTML:
<div class="demo" > Some text here </div>
jQuery:
$(".demo").click( function() {
window.location.href="link1.html";
});
I simply do
onClick="location.href='url or path here'"
What I would do is put a span inside the <a> tag, set the span to block, and add size to the span, or just apply the styling to the <a> tag. Definitely handle the positioning in the <a> tag style. Add an onclick event to the a where JavaScript will catch the event, then return false at the end of the JavaScript event to prevent default action of the href and bubbling of the click. This works in cases with or without JavaScript enabled, and any AJAX can be handled in the Javascript listener.
If you're using jQuery, you can use this as your listener and omit the onclick in the a tag.
$('#idofdiv').live("click", function(e) {
//add stuff here
e.preventDefault; //or use return false
});
this allows you to attach listeners to any changed elements as necessary.
A link with <div> tags:
<div style="cursor: pointer;" onclick="window.location='http://www.google.com';">
Something in the div
</div>
A link with <a> tags:
<a href="http://www.google.com">
<div>
Something in the div
</div>
</a>
Have come against an interesting problem and I'm stumped.
Basically on one of our pages we have a couple of hyperlinked areas. These areas are not only clickable where they have text but throughout the entire background by setting the link with display:block. You can see a simple example of such a clickable area here.
So recently the powers that be have asked me to add another link within this area. The inner link would have a different target to clickable area and will only be clickable for it's immediate text and the rest of the clickable area will wrap around it. You can see how this would fit together in this demo (the yellow bit represents the clickable portion of the inner link and the red represents the outer link).
NOTE: I realise this looks a very messy implementation but I'm afraid it's out of my hands.
By design (and for good reason) I cannot simply nest my <a> tags like so:
<a href="#" class="clickable_area">
<span>RED Background and clickable</span><br/>
<span>RED Background and clickable</span><br/>
<span>RED Background and clickable</span><br/>
<a class="inner_link" href="#">Yellow background and it's own link</a><br/>
</a>
Trying to nest the tags like this causes the outer link to be closed prematurely by the first instance of </a> as seen here.
One solution may be to make the inner link a span element and then use onclick events to perform the hyperlink via JavaScript but I'm not too found of this approach and would really prefer to avoid any JavaScript workarounds.
I've tried a couple of workarounds with CSS etc. but as yet I've come up dry. I've a feeling that absolute positioning or negative margining could be key but I've never been any good at either.
If anyone could offer up any suggestions I'd be very appreciative.
You can't nest links. My suggestion is to absolutely position the inner link over top of the outer area, somewhat like this:
<div class="container" style="position:relative">
<a href="...">
<span>RED Background and clickable</span><br/>
<span>RED Background and clickable</span><br/>
<span>RED Background and clickable</span><br/>
</a>
link 2
</div>
You can't nest links, but use absolute positioning.
<div id="wrapper">
<a id="bigred" href="...">Big clickable area</a>
<a id="yellow" href="...">Yellow background link</a>
</div>
CSS
#wrapper {
position: relative;
height: 300px;
width: 500px;
}
#bigred {
background: #ff0000;
position: absolute;
top: 0;
left: 0;
height: 300px;
width: 500px;
}
#yellow {
background: #ffff00
position: absolute;
top: 30px;
left: 30px;
}
Both links will be clickable. Yellow is drawn on top of red because of source order. If you change the order you will need to use z-index to control which displays on top of which.
Here you go a working example:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
<body>
<style>
a {text-decoration:none; background-color:red}
.clickable_area{display:block;color:#000; padding-bottom: 20px;}
.container{position: relative;}
.inner_link{position:absolute; bottom: 0px; background-color:yellow}
</style>
<div class="container">
<a href="#" class="clickable_area">
<span>RED Background and clickable</span><br/>
<span>RED Background and clickable</span><br/>
<span>RED Background and clickable</span><br/>
</a>
<a class="inner_link" href="#">Yellow background and it's own link</a>
</div>
</body>
</html>
I'd use a div to wrap your links. Is this what you're going for? http://jsfiddle.net/wcCMC/3/
I am getting unexpected results when using vertical-align on an image with accompanying text. If the text is wider than the container, it wraps UNDER the image like this, instead of simply wrapping to the next line:
alt text http://preview.moveable.com/jm/verticalalign.png
My HTML is simple:
<ul>
<li><img .../> some text </li>
...
</ul>
I have a height and overflow-y:scroll on the UL (likely not relevant)
I have a height set on the LI that is large enough for the placeholder image plus spacing.
I have vertical-align:middle on the image to get the text in the right place, almost
The rest is just margins and borders
Am am NOT using floats
How can I get the text to wrap properly, perferably without more markup?
If the image is static i would use a background image on the li and then simply add left padding to allow for the correct spacing
li {
background: url(/images/foo.jpg) center left no-repeat;
padding-left: barpx;
}
you could also use a margin on the li to allow for spacing to the left of the image inside the ul
if the images are different i would simply apply a class to each li to distinguish the difference
edit for seo friendlyness:
add the images into the markup and then hide them with your stylesheet so the user only sees the image set with background image, Google bots ignore stylesheets so will be served the image in the markup.
li img {
display:none
}
As #graphicdivine pointed out, there are two ways to interpret "properly." If you want things to fill up all the space around the image, I would do what he suggested: use float: left; on the image.
If, instead, you wanted to have a vertical block of text next to the image, you could apply the following:
<li style="display: table-row;">
<img src="..." style="vertical-align: middle; display: table-cell;" />
<span style="display: table-cell;">...</span>
</li>
Same disclaimer as before, though: this is no good in IE. Also, it breaks your "no more markup" rule, though I'm not sure how you wanted to achieve a different result without making changes. Perhaps I didn't understand you correctly.
Seems to me you could float the image left.