HTML Encyclopaedia

The a tag

The HTML container element 

<a> ..... </a>
is used to mark or anchor a particular point in an HTML file or to associate a hyperlink with the enclosed material which may be simple text or an <img> element or a sequence of elements.

The absence of content between the <a> and </a> tags is seen as an error by some browsers.

The HTML 3.2 standard defines five attributes for this tag, all are optional, although at least one must be present for the tag to be any use. Only the href and name attributes are commonly seen in practice.

  1. href

    The value is a URL. This associates a URL with whatever is enclosed within the <a> ... </a> tags. When the highlighted content is selected, the browser will access the resource indicated by the URL.

    Here's an example, if you click on the highlighted text, your browser will fetch another page.

    Here's the HTML for the above example 

    Here's <a href=dummylink.html>an example</a>, if you click on the
highlighted text, your browser will fetch another page.

    Note. The highlighting of text is usually achieved by use of a distinctive colour. Images usually have a distinctive border. The colour is determined by the link, alink and vlink attributes of the <body> tag. The use of the <font> tag's color attribute will have no effect. If the above attributes of the <body> tag are not explicitly set, then the rendering of the link text (commonly including underlining) is entirely under the control of the browser.

  2. name

    This effectively labels the current position within the file with the value associated with the attribute. A URL can be constructed pointing to this position within the file by appending #string to the URL identifying the file where string is the value of the attribute.

    The following HTML appears towards the bottom of this page 

    <hr>
<a name=Browsers><h3>Browsers</h3></a>
    This provides an anchor for the part of the page dealing with browser specific features. You can go straight there.

    The HTML to get there is 

    You can go <a href=#Browsers>straight there</a>.

    The part of a URL after the # symbol is called a fragment and, in this case, it is not necessary to quote the rest of the URL since the link is within the document. The full URL would be 

    http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/encyc/a.html#Browsers

    The use of within document links, perhaps driven from an initial menu, is a common practice to aid the navigation of information rich pages.

  3. rel

    To quote the HTML 3.2 standard

    The forward relationship also known as the "link type". It can be used to determine to how deal with the linked resource when printing out a collection of linked resources.
    If you can figure out what that means please let me know and I'll update this page.

  4. rev

    Again to quote the HTML 3.2 standard

    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 usd to identify the document author, either the author's email address with a mailto URL or a link to the author's home page.
    Erm, yes.

  5. title

    An advisory title for a linked resource.

  6. target

    This non HTML 3.2 attribute is used in conjunction with frames to identify the frame in which the "destination" URL is displayed.

Browsers

All browsers handle render this tag in the same way, although there are wide differences in the "distinctive" rendering, OP2 seems to draw half a box round the enclosed text.