A - Hyperlinks

This element is also available in our updated HTML 4 reference. Some characteristics may have changed.

Appearance:	<A HREF=`URL`> </A>
Attributes:	HREF=`URL`, NAME=`string`, REL=`string`, REV=`string`, TITLE=`string`
Contents:	TT, I, B, U, STRIKE, BIG, SMALL, SUB, SUP, EM, STRONG, DFN, CODE, SAMP, KBD, VAR, CITE, APPLET, IMG, FONT, BASEFONT, BR, MAP, INPUT, SELECT, TEXTAREA and plain text.
May occur in:	BODY, DIV, CENTER, BLOCKQUOTE, FORM, TH, TD, DT, DD, LI, P, H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6, PRE, ADDRESS, TT, I, B, U, STRIKE, BIG, SMALL, SUB, SUP, EM, STRONG, DFN, CODE, SAMP, KBD, VAR, CITE, FONT, APPLET, CAPTION.

The anchor tag is the "glue" for hypertext documents. The enclosed text and/or image(s) will be selectable by the user, and doing so will take the user to the location specified in the HREF attribute. The TITLE attribute can be used to provide a description of that location, which is displayed by some browsers when the mouse moves over the URL.

The NAME attribute is used to set up "named anchors." The enclosed text will be marked as a "target" to which a browser can jump directly. For example, if you have "<A NAME="toc">Table of Contents</A>" somewhere in the document, and the user selects the URL "#toc" he will be taken to that line.

REL and REV are not widely used, although these attributes were already present in the HTML 2.0 specs. They are used to mark up relationships between the current document and the resource in the link. REL="foo" in document A, in a link pointing to B, indicates that document A has a relationship of "foo" with document B. REV="foo" indicates B has that relationship with A. Since these attributes are not widely used, there is no standard list of values for REL and REV.

Notes:

Be sure to close the quotes around the value in HREF. Older browsers were often quite forgiving about them, but as this caused other problems, it was fixed in newer releases. This means that a hyperlink with an unclosed quote may not work correctly.
You may not nest anchors, not even if one uses the HREF and the other uses the NAME attribute.
The A element used with the NAME attribute requires a closing tag and non-empty content.
TITLE is most often used for mailto URLs, where it is used to set the subject of the message. Some browsers also use it if you bookmark the link.
Since you cannot nest anchors, you can't hyperlink a named anchor. You can however combine the NAME and HREF anchors into one anchor; <A NAME="foo" HREF="bar">text</A> works just fine.

HTML 3.2 Reference ~ Elements by Function ~ Elements Alphabetically

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