Is an empty href valid

Question

One of our web developers uses the following html as a placeholder for styling a drop down list    lt a href    class  arrow  gt  lt  a gt    Is this considered anchor tag valid     Since there is no href value  it shows up as broken on some of our link checker reports

User · Answer

Indeed  you can leave it empty  W3 validator doesn t complain    Taking the idea one step further  leave out the      The advantage of this is that the link isn t treated as an anchor to the current page    lt a href gt sth lt  a gt

User · Answer

As others have said  it is valid   There are some downsides to each approach though   href     adds an extra entry to the browser history  which is annoying when e g  back-buttoning    href    reloads the page  href  javascript    does not seem to have any problems  other than looking messy and meaningless  - anyone know of any

User · Answer

Although this question is already answered  tl dr  yes  an empty href value is valid   none of the existing answers references the relevant specifications   An empty string can   t be a URI  However  the href attribute doesn   t only take URIs as value  but also URI references  An empty string may be a URI reference   HTML 4 01  HTML 4 01 uses RFC 2396  where it says in section 4 2  Same-document References  bold emphasis mine       A URI reference that does not contain a URI is a reference to the current document   In other words  an empty URI reference within a document is interpreted as a reference to the start of that document  and a reference containing only a fragment identifier is a reference to the identified fragment of that document    RFC 2396 is obsoleted by RFC 3986  which is currently IETF   s URI standard   which essentially says the same   HTML5  HTML5 uses  valid URL potentially surrounded by spaces   valid URL  W3C   s URL spec  which has been discontinued  WHATWG   s URL Standard should be used instead  see the last section    HTML 5 1  HTML 5 1 uses  valid URL potentially surrounded by spaces   valid URL  WHATWG   s URL Standard  see the next section    WHATWG HTML  WHATWG   s HTML uses  valid URL potentially surrounded by spaces  the definition of valid URL string from WHATWG   s URL Standard  where it says that it can be a relative-URL-with-fragment string  which must at least be a relative-URL string  which can be a path-relative-scheme-less-URL string  which is a path-relative-URL string that doesn   t start with a scheme string followed by    and its definition says  bold emphasis mine       A path-relative-URL string must be zero or more URL-path-segment strings  separated from each other by U 002F      and not start with U 002F

User · Answer

The current HTML5 draft also allows ommitting the href attribute completely      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    To answer your question  Yes it s valid

User · Answer

it s valid but like UpTheCreek said  There are some downsides to each approach   if you re calling ajax through an  tag  leave the href    like this will keep the page reloading  and the ajax code will never be called      just got this thought would be good to share

User · Answer

It is valid   However  standard practice is to use href     or sometimes href  javascript

User · Answer

Try to do  lt a href     class  arrow  gt  instead   Note the sharp   character

User · Answer

A word of caution   In my experience  omitting the href attribute causes problems for accessibility as the keyboard navigation will ignore it and never give it focus like it will when href is present  Manually including your  element in the tabindex is a way around that

User · Answer

Whilst W3 s validator may not complain about an empty href attribute  the current HTML5 Working Draft specifies      The href attribute on a and area elements must have a value that is a valid URL potentially surrounded by spaces    A valid URL is a URL which complies with the URL Standard  Now the URL Standard is a bit confusing to get your head around  however nowhere does it state that a URL can be an empty string      which means that an empty string is not a valid URL   The HTML5 Working Draft goes on  however  to state      Note  The href attribute on a and area elements is not required  when those elements do not have href attributes they do not create hyperlinks    This means we can simply omit the href attribute altogether    lt a class  arrow  gt  lt  a gt    If your intention is that these href-less a elements should still require keyboard interraction  you ll have to go down the normal route of assigning a role and tabindex alongside your usual click keydown handlers    lt a class  arrow  role  button  tab-index  0  gt  lt  a gt

User · Answer

While it may be completely valid HTML to not include an href  especially with an onclick handler  there are some things to consider  it will not be keyboard-focusable without having a tabindex value set  Furthermore  this will be inaccessible to screenreader software using Internet Explorer  as IE will report through the accessibility interfaces that any anchor element without an href attribute as not-focusable  regardless of whether the tabindex has been set    So while the following may be completely valid    lt a class  arrow  gt Link content lt  a gt    It s far better to explicitly add a null-effect href attribute   lt a href  javascript void 0    class  arrow  gt Link content lt  a gt    For full support of all users  if you re using the class with CSS to render an image  you should also include some text content  such as the title attribute to provide a textual description of what s going on    lt a href  javascript void 0    class  arrow  title  Go to linked content  gt Link content lt  a gt

[html] Is an empty href valid?

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