[whatwg] [WA1] The a element could be empty

fantasai fantasai.lists at inkedblade.net
Fri Sep 2 21:07:16 PDT 2005


S. Mike Dierken wrote:
>>An empty <a> element is semantically meaningless.
> 
> An <a> element can be a target of a link - it is addressable via a URI. Does
> that count as meaningless?
> 
> See http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/links.html#h-12.1
> The destination anchor of a link may be an element within an HTML document.
> The destination anchor must be given an anchor name and any URI addressing
> this anchor must include the name as its fragment identifier.
> 
> Destination anchors in HTML documents may be specified either by the A
> element (naming it with the name attribute), or by any other element (naming
> with the id attribute).

The A element no longer has a name attribute in HTML 5; the 'id'
attribute is a much better design, and is already well supported.

http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#the-a

~fantasai



More information about the whatwg mailing list