I've read various posts on this subject and think I understand the usual points of failure. I find that my two product thumbnail images, under the "This Click'n'Pick Set Consists Of The Following 2 Products" heading, are clickable, but do not take me to the named <div> element further down the page. Instead, they cause navigation to http://www.premierrange.co.uk/#bundle_product_anchor_448, for example. I see this both in Chrome (18.0.1025.33 beta) and Firefox (10.0.1) on Linux.
http://www.premierrange.co.uk/index.php?main_page=clicknpick&groups_id=2&chosen_0=243&chosen_1=448
So for example there's an anchor targeting '#bundle_product_anchor_243':
<a href="#bundle_product_anchor_243" title="Click here to jump to the 70cm Truly Curved Black Glass Curved Cooker Hood H77-7B">
<img src="http://www.premierrange.co.uk/thumbnailer.php?filename=images/H77-700.jpg&height=100" alt="70cm Truly Curved Black Glass Curved Cooker Hood H77-7B">
</a>
This targets the <div> further down the page:
<div class="productSeparator" id="bundle_product_anchor_243">
<h1>Product number 1 in this bundle of 2 products</h1>
</div>
I've also tried making the <h1> inside the target <div> be the target instead, in case the target must be an inline element rather than a div, but nothing seems to work.
The <div> containing the badly behaving <a> is completely closed by the time the <div> containing the target element appears in the document. I don't think there's a problem with the target element not being defined at the point in time the <a> is parsed by the browser.
Manually adding "#bundle_product_anchor_448" to the URL does work.
I am aware that the page fails HTML validation on a large number of points, due to a large number of factors that I'm not going to be able to address easily. I'd have thought this basic 'jump to a named element' functionality should work regardless. The page is completely functional other than this little navigation quirk.
Anyone got any clues?
Try removing <base href="http://www.premierrange.co.uk/"></base> from the page header.
The <base> tag specifies the base URL or target for all relative URLs (the ones that don't say http://www.example.com/...) on your page. Without it, your link should function as intended though you may have to fix other links to accommodate this change.
While using the <base> tag in your application, the best approach would be to just use absolute URL's before the hash, with the absolute URL pointing to the same page you're in.
So, assuming that you are on the 'http://example.com/products/curved-glass' page, instead of
<a href="#bundle_product_anchor_243">...
you would need to include the absolute current URL before the hash:
<a href="http://example.com/products/curved-glass#bundle_product_anchor_243">...
Finding out the current URL is a trivial task in most of the environments, and this method also avoids the removal of your <base> tag, action which might have negative consequences in other areas of your application.
Related
On many websites I see links that have href="#". What does it mean? What is it used for?
About hyperlinks:
The main use of anchor tags - <a></a> - is as hyperlinks. That basically means that they take you somewhere. Hyperlinks require the href property, because it specifies a location.
Hash:
A hash - `#` within a hyperlink specifies an HTML element id to which the window should be scrolled.
href="#some-id" would scroll to an element on the current page such as <div id="some-id">.
href="//site.example/#some-id" would go to site.example and scroll to the id on that page.
Scroll to Top:
href="#" doesn't specify an id name, but does have a corresponding location - the top of the page. Clicking an anchor with href="#" will move the scroll position to the top.
See this demo.
This is the expected behavior according to the w3 documentation.
Hyperlink placeholders:
An example where a hyperlink placeholder makes sense is within template previews. On single page demos for templates, I have often seen <a href="#"> so that the anchor tag is a hyperlink, but doesn't go anywhere. Why not leave the href property blank? A blank href property is actually a hyperlink to the current page. In other words, it will cause a page refresh. As I discussed, href="#" is also a hyperlink, and causes scrolling. Therefore, the best solution for hyperlink placeholders is actually href="#!" The idea here is that there hopefully isn't an element on the page with id="!" (who does that!?) and the hyperlink therefore refers to nothing - so nothing happens.
About anchor tags:
Another question that you may be wondering is, "Why not just leave the href property off?". A common response I've heard is that the href property is required, so it "should" be present on anchors. This is FALSE! The href property is required only for an anchor to actually be a hyperlink! Read this from w3. So, why not just leave it off for placeholders? Browsers render default styles for elements and will change the default style of an anchor tag that doesn't have the href property. Instead, it will be considered like regular text. It even changes the browser's behavior regarding the element. The status bar (bottom of the screen) will not be displayed when hovering on an anchor without the href property. It is best to use a placeholder href value on an anchor to ensure it is treated as a hyperlink.
See this demo demonstrating style and behavior differences.
Putting the "#" symbol as the href for something means that it points not to a different URL, but rather to another id or name tag on the same page. For example:
Click to go to the bottom of the page
blah blah
blah blah
...
<a id="bottomOfPage"></a>
However, if there is no id or name then it goes "no where."
Here's another similar question asked HTML Anchors with 'name' or 'id'?
Unfortunately, the most common use of <a href="#"> is by lazy programmers who want clickable non-hyperlink javascript-coded elements that behave like anchors, but they can't be arsed to add cursor: pointer; or :hover styles to a class for their non-hyperlink elements, and are additionally too lazy to set href to javascript:void(0);.
The problem with this is that one <a href="#" onclick="some_function();"> or another inevitably ends up with a javascript error, and an anchor with an onclick javascript error always ends up following its href. Normally this ends up being an annoying jump to the top of the page, but in the case of sites using <base>, <a href="#"> is handled as <a href="[base href]/#">, resulting in an unexpected navigation. If any logable errors are being generated, you won't see them in the latter case unless you enable persistent logs.
If an anchor element is used as a non-anchor it should have its href set to javascript:void(0); for the sake of graceful degradation.
I just wasted two days debugging a random unexpected page redirect that should have simply refreshed the page, and finally tracked it down to a function raising the click event of an <a href="#">. Replacing the # with javascript:void(0); fixed it.
The first thing I'm doing Monday is purging the project of all instances of <a href="#">.
It's a link that links to nowhere essentially (it just adds "#" onto the URL). It's used for a number of different reasons. For instance, if you're using some sort of JavaScript/jQuery and don't want the actual HTML to link anywhere.
It's also used for page anchors, which is used to redirect to a different part of the page.
Unordered lists are often created with the intent of using them as a menu, but an li list item is text. Because the list li item is text, the mouse pointer will not be an arrow, but an "I cursor". Users are accustomed to seeing a pointing finger for a mouse pointer when something is clickable. Using an anchor tag a inside of the li tag causes the mouse pointer to change to a pointing finger. The pointing finger is a lot better for using the list as a menu.
<ul id="menu">
<li>Menu Item 1</li>
<li>Menu Item 2</li>
<li>Menu Item 3</li>
<li>Menu Item 4</li>
</ul>
If the list is being used for a menu, and doesn't need a link, then a URL doesn't need to be designated. But the problem is that if you leave out the href attribute, text in the <a> tag is seen as text, and therefore the mouse pointer is back to an I-cursor. The I-cursor might make the user think that the menu item is not clickable. Therefore, you still need an href, but you don't need a link to anywhere.
You could use lots of div or p tags for a menu list, but the mouse pointer would be an I-cursor for them also.
You could use lots of buttons stacked on top of each other for a menu list, but the list seems to be preferable. And that's probably why the href="#" that points to nowhere is used in anchor tags inside of list tags.
You can set the pointer style in CSS, so that is another option. The href="#" to nowhere might just be the lazy way to set some styling.
The problem with using href="#" for an empty link is that it will take you to the top of the page which may not be the desired action.
To avoid this, for older browsers or non-HTML5 doctypes, use
Goes Nowhere
As some of the other answers have pointed out, the a element requires an href attribute and the # is used as a placeholder, but it is also a historical artifact.
From Mozilla Developer Network:
href
This was the single required attribute for anchors defining a
hypertext source link, but is no longer required in HTML5. Omitting
this attribute creates a placeholder link. The href attribute
indicates the link target, either a URL or a URL fragment. A URL
fragment is a name preceded by a hash mark (#), which specifies an
internal target location (an ID) within the current document.
Also, per the HTML5 spec:
If the a element has no href attribute, then the element represents a
placeholder for where a link might otherwise have been placed, if it
had been relevant, consisting of just the element's contents.
As far as I know it’s usually a placeholder for links that have some JavaScript attached to them. The main point of the link is served by executing the JavaScript code; browsers with JS support then ignore the real link target. If the browser does not support JS, the hash mark essentially turns the link into a no‑op. See also unobtrusive JavaScript.
The href attribute defines the URL of the resource of a link. If the anchor tag does not have href tag then it will not become hyperlink. The href attribute have the following values:
1. Absolute path: move to another site like href="http://www.google.com"
2. Relative path: move to another page within the site like herf ="defaultpage.aspx"
3. Move to an element with a specified id within the page like href="#bottom"
4. href="javascript:void(0)", it does not move anywhere.
5. href="#" , it does not move anywhere but scroll on the top of the current page.
6. href= "" , it will load the current page but some browsers causes forbidden errors.
Note: When we do not need to specified any url inside a anchor tag then use
Test1
I am trying to create a link that goes directly to a certain section of a different page. Here is what I'm doing.
I create an anchor point using the name attribute:
<a name="fish"></a>
<p>some content....</p>
I create a link with the # added to the end
"http://example.com#fish"
***note I have also tried the id method instead of name which still gives me the same issue.
example: <div id="fish"></div>
The functionality works fine and it takes me to the specific part on the page, the only issue is that it looks different on different browsers. What firefox displays is about 5 inches higher than what chrome displays.
It's probably because the a tag is taking up some space.
Easiest solution, use an id instead.
<p id="fish">some content....</p>
Make sure there's enough content below so it can scroll
Most browsers have the same css default value for common html elements, however it is possible that some elements have different attribute values for padding and margin.
One way to avoid these differences is explicitly applying the values in the css statements.
p {margin: 10px 0px}
If you do not want to do this, I recommend you put link exactly in the position where text is located.
<p><a name="fish"></a>some content....</p>
You can locate the link anywhere since the anchor element will not be visible in the viewport
I am not a HTML/CSS expert but I am in charge of developing and maintaining a website for my employer.
I have set of link in the middle of my webpage that I want to have a specific CSS applied to without affecting any of the other links, and really the only change I want to make is to move the title popup to the right. Basically, the pointing hand hover mouse icon blocks the text in the title, so I want to move the popup to the right of the pointer, so that it can be read completely during a hover.
I've seen a few different ways to manipulate the title popup but they are either way too complex for what I need, way too simple in that they affect all <a> tags on the page, or do not explain how to do what I want which is just move the popup to the right a little bit.
You can manually style any element of the page by using 'inline styling' which will not effect any of the other elements on the page.
You do this in the HTML rather than the Style sheet, for example say your style sheet has:
.tinybutton {margin:0;padding;0:}
Which would use the element in HTML as:
<a class="tinybutton" href="#"> </a>
Now let's pretend you want to move the button slightly right without editing the CSS you then use the inline styling like so:
<a class="tinybutton" style="margin-left:10px" href="#"> </a>
So in other words just add style=" " with the styling options you require to the element that you want to edit without effecting the CSS.
Now that you have answered your own question, I know that the titles you are trying to move are tool-tips generated by the browser.
Not only can those not be moved, these tooltips are browser dependent and looks different on each browser. I have no idea which one you are using but it is not Chrome because we made sure that the tooltip does not overlap the mouse cursor.
The other possibility, like the jQuery plugin you mentioned, is to write Javascript that renders each title in its own invisible HTML element. Then it makes those tooltips appear on by adding an a :hover style or mouse-event-handler.
Having done further research on this, I found several questions in StackExchange that indicate that a title cannot be modified. So given this:
<a title='stuff here' href='#'>Click me!</a>
it is not possible to manipulate the "stuff here" section using jscript, css, etc. The only option is to use a jQuery plugin or something along those lines, and that has proven to be beyond my ability to troubleshoot.
For the time being, I simply added spaces to the front of the title to push the text out, like this:
<a title=' stuff here' href='#'>Click me!</a>
I am attempting to add itemprop="image" for a corporation's logo (as shown here: http://www.schema.org/Corporation), but I am using the Gantry Logo plugin from the Gantry framework for Wordpress. As a result, the image is actually loaded by a reference in CSS, and not using the HTML tag.
Unfortunately, it seems that the itemprop="image" can only be added to that tag, as that is where it grabs the URL from.
Can anybody think of a way around this without attempting to hide a logo on the site and place the tag on it?
(The site I am specifically referring to is http://www.bpsresolver.com for reference.)
"Can anybody think of a way around this without attempting to hide a
logo on the site and place the tag on it?"
That's exactly what needs to be done.
The way to do it is to open the source for this Gantry Logo plugin and find the logo's <a id='logo'></a> that the css refers to and change it to <img src='yourimage.jpg'/> I usually use WindowsGrep to find id='logo' or whatever it may be in your case.
But to answer your question: "Is there a way to add microdata to an image referenced in CSS?" - No :)
What I ended up doing to fix it was going to the logo.php plugin located in /plugins/gantry/widgets/. At the bottom of that file is where the <a> tag is that miro mentioned.
Instead of removing it and replacing it (since it had a number of other CSS properties attached that needed to stay the same), I simply added the <img> tag in between the <a> tags, and changed the CSS that referred to the image from background: url(url_to_image); to background: transparent;.
Lastly, I wrapped the whole thing in a <div> tag which I used to indicate the scope, and placed itemprop inside <img>.
On many websites I see links that have href="#". What does it mean? What is it used for?
About hyperlinks:
The main use of anchor tags - <a></a> - is as hyperlinks. That basically means that they take you somewhere. Hyperlinks require the href property, because it specifies a location.
Hash:
A hash - `#` within a hyperlink specifies an HTML element id to which the window should be scrolled.
href="#some-id" would scroll to an element on the current page such as <div id="some-id">.
href="//site.example/#some-id" would go to site.example and scroll to the id on that page.
Scroll to Top:
href="#" doesn't specify an id name, but does have a corresponding location - the top of the page. Clicking an anchor with href="#" will move the scroll position to the top.
See this demo.
This is the expected behavior according to the w3 documentation.
Hyperlink placeholders:
An example where a hyperlink placeholder makes sense is within template previews. On single page demos for templates, I have often seen <a href="#"> so that the anchor tag is a hyperlink, but doesn't go anywhere. Why not leave the href property blank? A blank href property is actually a hyperlink to the current page. In other words, it will cause a page refresh. As I discussed, href="#" is also a hyperlink, and causes scrolling. Therefore, the best solution for hyperlink placeholders is actually href="#!" The idea here is that there hopefully isn't an element on the page with id="!" (who does that!?) and the hyperlink therefore refers to nothing - so nothing happens.
About anchor tags:
Another question that you may be wondering is, "Why not just leave the href property off?". A common response I've heard is that the href property is required, so it "should" be present on anchors. This is FALSE! The href property is required only for an anchor to actually be a hyperlink! Read this from w3. So, why not just leave it off for placeholders? Browsers render default styles for elements and will change the default style of an anchor tag that doesn't have the href property. Instead, it will be considered like regular text. It even changes the browser's behavior regarding the element. The status bar (bottom of the screen) will not be displayed when hovering on an anchor without the href property. It is best to use a placeholder href value on an anchor to ensure it is treated as a hyperlink.
See this demo demonstrating style and behavior differences.
Putting the "#" symbol as the href for something means that it points not to a different URL, but rather to another id or name tag on the same page. For example:
Click to go to the bottom of the page
blah blah
blah blah
...
<a id="bottomOfPage"></a>
However, if there is no id or name then it goes "no where."
Here's another similar question asked HTML Anchors with 'name' or 'id'?
Unfortunately, the most common use of <a href="#"> is by lazy programmers who want clickable non-hyperlink javascript-coded elements that behave like anchors, but they can't be arsed to add cursor: pointer; or :hover styles to a class for their non-hyperlink elements, and are additionally too lazy to set href to javascript:void(0);.
The problem with this is that one <a href="#" onclick="some_function();"> or another inevitably ends up with a javascript error, and an anchor with an onclick javascript error always ends up following its href. Normally this ends up being an annoying jump to the top of the page, but in the case of sites using <base>, <a href="#"> is handled as <a href="[base href]/#">, resulting in an unexpected navigation. If any logable errors are being generated, you won't see them in the latter case unless you enable persistent logs.
If an anchor element is used as a non-anchor it should have its href set to javascript:void(0); for the sake of graceful degradation.
I just wasted two days debugging a random unexpected page redirect that should have simply refreshed the page, and finally tracked it down to a function raising the click event of an <a href="#">. Replacing the # with javascript:void(0); fixed it.
The first thing I'm doing Monday is purging the project of all instances of <a href="#">.
It's a link that links to nowhere essentially (it just adds "#" onto the URL). It's used for a number of different reasons. For instance, if you're using some sort of JavaScript/jQuery and don't want the actual HTML to link anywhere.
It's also used for page anchors, which is used to redirect to a different part of the page.
Unordered lists are often created with the intent of using them as a menu, but an li list item is text. Because the list li item is text, the mouse pointer will not be an arrow, but an "I cursor". Users are accustomed to seeing a pointing finger for a mouse pointer when something is clickable. Using an anchor tag a inside of the li tag causes the mouse pointer to change to a pointing finger. The pointing finger is a lot better for using the list as a menu.
<ul id="menu">
<li>Menu Item 1</li>
<li>Menu Item 2</li>
<li>Menu Item 3</li>
<li>Menu Item 4</li>
</ul>
If the list is being used for a menu, and doesn't need a link, then a URL doesn't need to be designated. But the problem is that if you leave out the href attribute, text in the <a> tag is seen as text, and therefore the mouse pointer is back to an I-cursor. The I-cursor might make the user think that the menu item is not clickable. Therefore, you still need an href, but you don't need a link to anywhere.
You could use lots of div or p tags for a menu list, but the mouse pointer would be an I-cursor for them also.
You could use lots of buttons stacked on top of each other for a menu list, but the list seems to be preferable. And that's probably why the href="#" that points to nowhere is used in anchor tags inside of list tags.
You can set the pointer style in CSS, so that is another option. The href="#" to nowhere might just be the lazy way to set some styling.
The problem with using href="#" for an empty link is that it will take you to the top of the page which may not be the desired action.
To avoid this, for older browsers or non-HTML5 doctypes, use
Goes Nowhere
As some of the other answers have pointed out, the a element requires an href attribute and the # is used as a placeholder, but it is also a historical artifact.
From Mozilla Developer Network:
href
This was the single required attribute for anchors defining a
hypertext source link, but is no longer required in HTML5. Omitting
this attribute creates a placeholder link. The href attribute
indicates the link target, either a URL or a URL fragment. A URL
fragment is a name preceded by a hash mark (#), which specifies an
internal target location (an ID) within the current document.
Also, per the HTML5 spec:
If the a element has no href attribute, then the element represents a
placeholder for where a link might otherwise have been placed, if it
had been relevant, consisting of just the element's contents.
As far as I know it’s usually a placeholder for links that have some JavaScript attached to them. The main point of the link is served by executing the JavaScript code; browsers with JS support then ignore the real link target. If the browser does not support JS, the hash mark essentially turns the link into a no‑op. See also unobtrusive JavaScript.
The href attribute defines the URL of the resource of a link. If the anchor tag does not have href tag then it will not become hyperlink. The href attribute have the following values:
1. Absolute path: move to another site like href="http://www.google.com"
2. Relative path: move to another page within the site like herf ="defaultpage.aspx"
3. Move to an element with a specified id within the page like href="#bottom"
4. href="javascript:void(0)", it does not move anywhere.
5. href="#" , it does not move anywhere but scroll on the top of the current page.
6. href= "" , it will load the current page but some browsers causes forbidden errors.
Note: When we do not need to specified any url inside a anchor tag then use
Test1