Should I make HTML Anchors with name or id

Question

When one wants to refer to some part of a webpage with the  http   example com  foo  method  should one use   lt h1 gt  lt a name  foo   gt Foo Title lt  h1 gt    or   lt h1 id  foo  gt Foo Title lt  h1 gt    They both work  but are they equal  or do they have semantic differences

User · Answer

The second sample assigns a unique ID to the element in question. This element can then be manipulated or accessed using DHTML.

The first one, on the other hand, sets a named location within the document, akin to a bookmark. Attached to an "anchor", it makes perfect sense.

User · Answer

You shouldn   t use  lt h1 gt  lt a name  foo   gt Foo Title lt  h1 gt  in any flavor of HTML served as text html  because the XML empty element syntax isn   t supported in text html  However   lt h1 gt  lt a name  foo  gt Foo Title lt  a gt  lt  h1 gt  is OK in HTML4  It is not valid in HTML5 as currently drafted    lt h1 id  foo  gt Foo Title lt  h1 gt  is OK in both HTML4 and HTML5  This won   t work in Netscape 4  but you   ll probably use a dozen other features that don   t work in Netscape 4

User · Answer

The whole  named anchor  concept uses the name attribute  by definition  You should just stick to using the name  but the ID attribute might be handy for some javascript situations   As in the comments  you could always use both to hedge your bets

User · Answer

How about using name attribute for old browsers and id attribute to the new browsers  Both options will be used and fallback method will be implemented by default

User · Answer

The whole  named anchor  concept uses the name attribute  by definition  You should just stick to using the name  but the ID attribute might be handy for some javascript situations   As in the comments  you could always use both to hedge your bets

User · Answer

In html 5  the id    attribute defines a unique identifier for an element  which is also an anchor for a fragment link   In previous html standards  the name    attribute of the  lt a gt  element defines an anchor for a fragment link   I recommend something like  lt a name  foo  id  foo   lt  a  lt h1 Foo Title lt  h1  Because support for the id    attribute is a bit spotty even though the latest releases of all major browsers support it  the releases that don t aren t more than a few years old And it s best not to break something if there isn t a good reason to     It s compatible   amp  it doesn t style whatever s in the link d element  for the closing  lt  a  is still outside the element  but it s still valid in all current standards   Be sure that the name    and id    attributes of the  lt a gt  element are the same

User · Answer

Heads up for JavaScript users  all IDs become global variables under window    lt h1 id  foo  gt Foo Title lt  h1 gt    Just created the JS global   window foo   The value of window foo will be the HTMLElement for the h1    Unless you can guarantee all values used in id attributes are safe  you may prefer sticking to name     lt h1 name  foo  gt Foo Title lt  h1 gt

User · Answer

According to the HTML 5 specification  5 9 8 Navigating to a fragment identifier      For HTML documents  and the text html MIME type   the following processing model must be followed to determine what the indicated part of the document is             Parse the URL  and let fragid be the  lt fragment gt  component of the URL     If fragid is the empty string  then the indicated part of the document is the top of the document       If there is an element in the DOM that has an ID exactly equal to fragid  then the first such element in tree order is the indicated part of the document  stop the algorithm here       If there is an a element in the DOM that has a name attribute whose value is exactly equal to fragid  then the first such element in tree order is the indicated part of the document  stop the algorithm here       Otherwise  there is no indicated part of the document        So  it will look for id  foo   and then will follow to name  foo   Edit  As pointed out by  hsivonen  in HTML5 the a element has no name attribute   However  the above rules still apply to other named elements

User · Answer

The second sample assigns a unique ID to the element in question. This element can then be manipulated or accessed using DHTML.

The first one, on the other hand, sets a named location within the document, akin to a bookmark. Attached to an "anchor", it makes perfect sense.

User · Answer

In html 5  the id    attribute defines a unique identifier for an element  which is also an anchor for a fragment link   In previous html standards  the name    attribute of the  lt a gt  element defines an anchor for a fragment link   I recommend something like  lt a name  foo  id  foo   lt  a  lt h1 Foo Title lt  h1  Because support for the id    attribute is a bit spotty even though the latest releases of all major browsers support it  the releases that don t aren t more than a few years old And it s best not to break something if there isn t a good reason to     It s compatible   amp  it doesn t style whatever s in the link d element  for the closing  lt  a  is still outside the element  but it s still valid in all current standards   Be sure that the name    and id    attributes of the  lt a gt  element are the same

User · Answer

ID method will not work on older browsers  anchor name method will be deprecated in newer HTML versions    I d go with id

User · Answer

According to the HTML 5 specification  5 9 8 Navigating to a fragment identifier      For HTML documents  and the text html MIME type   the following processing model must be followed to determine what the indicated part of the document is             Parse the URL  and let fragid be the  lt fragment gt  component of the URL     If fragid is the empty string  then the indicated part of the document is the top of the document       If there is an element in the DOM that has an ID exactly equal to fragid  then the first such element in tree order is the indicated part of the document  stop the algorithm here       If there is an a element in the DOM that has a name attribute whose value is exactly equal to fragid  then the first such element in tree order is the indicated part of the document  stop the algorithm here       Otherwise  there is no indicated part of the document        So  it will look for id  foo   and then will follow to name  foo   Edit  As pointed out by  hsivonen  in HTML5 the a element has no name attribute   However  the above rules still apply to other named elements

User · Answer

There s no semantic difference  the trend in the standards is toward the use of id rather than name  However  there are differences that may lead one to prefer name in some cases  The HTML 4 01 specification offers the following hints   Use id or name  Authors should consider the following issues when deciding whether to use id or name for an anchor name    The id attribute can act as more than just an anchor name  e g   style sheet selector  processing identifier  etc    Some older user agents don t support anchors created with the id attribute  The name attribute allows richer anchor names  with entities

User · Answer

Just an observation about the markup  The markup form  in prior versions of HTML provided an anchor point  The markup forms in HTML5 using the id attribute  while mostly equivalent  require an element to identify  almost all of which are normally expected to contain content    An empty span or div could be used  for instance  but this usage looks and smells degenerate    One thought is to use the wbr element for this purpose  The wbr has an empty content model and simply declares that a line break is possible  this is still a slightly gratuitous use of a markup tag  but much less so than gratuitous document divisions or empty text spans

User · Answer

There s no semantic difference  the trend in the standards is toward the use of id rather than name  However  there are differences that may lead one to prefer name in some cases  The HTML 4 01 specification offers the following hints   Use id or name  Authors should consider the following issues when deciding whether to use id or name for an anchor name    The id attribute can act as more than just an anchor name  e g   style sheet selector  processing identifier  etc    Some older user agents don t support anchors created with the id attribute  The name attribute allows richer anchor names  with entities

User · Answer

I have a web page consisting of a number of vertically stacked div containers  identical in format and differing only in serial number  I wanted to hide the name anchor at the top of each div  so the most economical solution turned out to be including the anchor as an id within the opening div tag  i e    lt div id   serial number   class  topic wrapper  gt

User · Answer

You shouldn   t use  lt h1 gt  lt a name  foo   gt Foo Title lt  h1 gt  in any flavor of HTML served as text html  because the XML empty element syntax isn   t supported in text html  However   lt h1 gt  lt a name  foo  gt Foo Title lt  a gt  lt  h1 gt  is OK in HTML4  It is not valid in HTML5 as currently drafted    lt h1 id  foo  gt Foo Title lt  h1 gt  is OK in both HTML4 and HTML5  This won   t work in Netscape 4  but you   ll probably use a dozen other features that don   t work in Netscape 4

User · Answer

Heads up for JavaScript users  all IDs become global variables under window    lt h1 id  foo  gt Foo Title lt  h1 gt    Just created the JS global   window foo   The value of window foo will be the HTMLElement for the h1    Unless you can guarantee all values used in id attributes are safe  you may prefer sticking to name     lt h1 name  foo  gt Foo Title lt  h1 gt

User · Answer

I have a web page consisting of a number of vertically stacked div containers  identical in format and differing only in serial number  I wanted to hide the name anchor at the top of each div  so the most economical solution turned out to be including the anchor as an id within the opening div tag  i e    lt div id   serial number   class  topic wrapper  gt

User · Answer

The whole  named anchor  concept uses the name attribute  by definition  You should just stick to using the name  but the ID attribute might be handy for some javascript situations   As in the comments  you could always use both to hedge your bets

User · Answer

According to the HTML 5 specification  5 9 8 Navigating to a fragment identifier      For HTML documents  and the text html MIME type   the following processing model must be followed to determine what the indicated part of the document is             Parse the URL  and let fragid be the  lt fragment gt  component of the URL     If fragid is the empty string  then the indicated part of the document is the top of the document       If there is an element in the DOM that has an ID exactly equal to fragid  then the first such element in tree order is the indicated part of the document  stop the algorithm here       If there is an a element in the DOM that has a name attribute whose value is exactly equal to fragid  then the first such element in tree order is the indicated part of the document  stop the algorithm here       Otherwise  there is no indicated part of the document        So  it will look for id  foo   and then will follow to name  foo   Edit  As pointed out by  hsivonen  in HTML5 the a element has no name attribute   However  the above rules still apply to other named elements

User · Answer

I have to say if you are going to be linking to that area in the page    such as page html foo and Foo Title isn t a link you should be using    lt h1 id  foo  gt Foo Title lt  h1 gt    If you instead put an  lt a gt  reference around it your headline will be influenced by an  lt a gt  specific CSS within your site  It s just extra markup  and you shouldn t need it  I d highly recommend placing an id on the headline  not only is it better formed  but it will allow you to either address that object in Javascript or CSS

User · Answer

There s no semantic difference  the trend in the standards is toward the use of id rather than name  However  there are differences that may lead one to prefer name in some cases  The HTML 4 01 specification offers the following hints   Use id or name  Authors should consider the following issues when deciding whether to use id or name for an anchor name    The id attribute can act as more than just an anchor name  e g   style sheet selector  processing identifier  etc    Some older user agents don t support anchors created with the id attribute  The name attribute allows richer anchor names  with entities

User · Answer

Just an observation about the markup  The markup form  in prior versions of HTML provided an anchor point  The markup forms in HTML5 using the id attribute  while mostly equivalent  require an element to identify  almost all of which are normally expected to contain content    An empty span or div could be used  for instance  but this usage looks and smells degenerate    One thought is to use the wbr element for this purpose  The wbr has an empty content model and simply declares that a line break is possible  this is still a slightly gratuitous use of a markup tag  but much less so than gratuitous document divisions or empty text spans

User · Answer

How about using name attribute for old browsers and id attribute to the new browsers  Both options will be used and fallback method will be implemented by default

User · Answer

You shouldn   t use  lt h1 gt  lt a name  foo   gt Foo Title lt  h1 gt  in any flavor of HTML served as text html  because the XML empty element syntax isn   t supported in text html  However   lt h1 gt  lt a name  foo  gt Foo Title lt  a gt  lt  h1 gt  is OK in HTML4  It is not valid in HTML5 as currently drafted    lt h1 id  foo  gt Foo Title lt  h1 gt  is OK in both HTML4 and HTML5  This won   t work in Netscape 4  but you   ll probably use a dozen other features that don   t work in Netscape 4

User · Answer

The whole  named anchor  concept uses the name attribute  by definition  You should just stick to using the name  but the ID attribute might be handy for some javascript situations   As in the comments  you could always use both to hedge your bets

User · Answer

Wikipedia makes heavy use of this feature like this    lt a href   History  gt       lt  a gt   lt span class  mw-headline  id  History  gt History lt  span gt    And Wikipedia is working for everybody  so I would feel safe sticking with this form   Also don t forget  you can use this not only with spans but with divs or even table cells  and then you have access to the  target pseudo-class on the element  Just watch out not to change the width  like with bold text  cause that moves content around  which is disturbing   Named anchors - my vote is to avoid     Names and ids are in the same namespace     - Two attributes with the same namespace is just crazy  Let s just say deprecated already   Anchors elements without href atribute  - Yet again  the nature of an element  hyperlink or not  is defined by having an atribute   Double crazy  Common sense says to avoid it altogether  If you ever style an anchor without a pseudo-class  the styling applies to each  In CSS3 you can get around this with attribute selectors  or same styling for each pseudoclass   but still it s a workaround  This usually doesn t come up because you choose colors per pseudo-class  and the underline being present by default it only makes sense to remove  which makes it the same as other text  But you ever decide to make your links bold  it ll cause trouble  Netscape 4 might not support the id feature  but still an unknown attribute won t cause any trouble  That s what called compatibility for me

User · Answer

ID method will not work on older browsers  anchor name method will be deprecated in newer HTML versions    I d go with id

User · Answer

According to the HTML 5 specification  5 9 8 Navigating to a fragment identifier      For HTML documents  and the text html MIME type   the following processing model must be followed to determine what the indicated part of the document is             Parse the URL  and let fragid be the  lt fragment gt  component of the URL     If fragid is the empty string  then the indicated part of the document is the top of the document       If there is an element in the DOM that has an ID exactly equal to fragid  then the first such element in tree order is the indicated part of the document  stop the algorithm here       If there is an a element in the DOM that has a name attribute whose value is exactly equal to fragid  then the first such element in tree order is the indicated part of the document  stop the algorithm here       Otherwise  there is no indicated part of the document        So  it will look for id  foo   and then will follow to name  foo   Edit  As pointed out by  hsivonen  in HTML5 the a element has no name attribute   However  the above rules still apply to other named elements

User · Answer

lt h1 id  foo  gt Foo Title lt  h1 gt    is what should be used  Don t use an anchor unless you want a link

User · Answer

lt h1 id  foo  gt Foo Title lt  h1 gt    is what should be used  Don t use an anchor unless you want a link

User · Answer

There s no semantic difference  the trend in the standards is toward the use of id rather than name  However  there are differences that may lead one to prefer name in some cases  The HTML 4 01 specification offers the following hints   Use id or name  Authors should consider the following issues when deciding whether to use id or name for an anchor name    The id attribute can act as more than just an anchor name  e g   style sheet selector  processing identifier  etc    Some older user agents don t support anchors created with the id attribute  The name attribute allows richer anchor names  with entities

User · Answer

I have to say if you are going to be linking to that area in the page    such as page html foo and Foo Title isn t a link you should be using    lt h1 id  foo  gt Foo Title lt  h1 gt    If you instead put an  lt a gt  reference around it your headline will be influenced by an  lt a gt  specific CSS within your site  It s just extra markup  and you shouldn t need it  I d highly recommend placing an id on the headline  not only is it better formed  but it will allow you to either address that object in Javascript or CSS

User · Answer

I have to say if you are going to be linking to that area in the page    such as page html foo and Foo Title isn t a link you should be using    lt h1 id  foo  gt Foo Title lt  h1 gt    If you instead put an  lt a gt  reference around it your headline will be influenced by an  lt a gt  specific CSS within your site  It s just extra markup  and you shouldn t need it  I d highly recommend placing an id on the headline  not only is it better formed  but it will allow you to either address that object in Javascript or CSS

User · Answer

You shouldn   t use  lt h1 gt  lt a name  foo   gt Foo Title lt  h1 gt  in any flavor of HTML served as text html  because the XML empty element syntax isn   t supported in text html  However   lt h1 gt  lt a name  foo  gt Foo Title lt  a gt  lt  h1 gt  is OK in HTML4  It is not valid in HTML5 as currently drafted    lt h1 id  foo  gt Foo Title lt  h1 gt  is OK in both HTML4 and HTML5  This won   t work in Netscape 4  but you   ll probably use a dozen other features that don   t work in Netscape 4

User · Answer

ID method will not work on older browsers  anchor name method will be deprecated in newer HTML versions    I d go with id

User · Answer

The second sample assigns a unique ID to the element in question. This element can then be manipulated or accessed using DHTML.

The first one, on the other hand, sets a named location within the document, akin to a bookmark. Attached to an "anchor", it makes perfect sense.

User · Answer

I have to say if you are going to be linking to that area in the page    such as page html foo and Foo Title isn t a link you should be using    lt h1 id  foo  gt Foo Title lt  h1 gt    If you instead put an  lt a gt  reference around it your headline will be influenced by an  lt a gt  specific CSS within your site  It s just extra markup  and you shouldn t need it  I d highly recommend placing an id on the headline  not only is it better formed  but it will allow you to either address that object in Javascript or CSS

User · Answer

Wikipedia makes heavy use of this feature like this    lt a href   History  gt       lt  a gt   lt span class  mw-headline  id  History  gt History lt  span gt    And Wikipedia is working for everybody  so I would feel safe sticking with this form   Also don t forget  you can use this not only with spans but with divs or even table cells  and then you have access to the  target pseudo-class on the element  Just watch out not to change the width  like with bold text  cause that moves content around  which is disturbing   Named anchors - my vote is to avoid     Names and ids are in the same namespace     - Two attributes with the same namespace is just crazy  Let s just say deprecated already   Anchors elements without href atribute  - Yet again  the nature of an element  hyperlink or not  is defined by having an atribute   Double crazy  Common sense says to avoid it altogether  If you ever style an anchor without a pseudo-class  the styling applies to each  In CSS3 you can get around this with attribute selectors  or same styling for each pseudoclass   but still it s a workaround  This usually doesn t come up because you choose colors per pseudo-class  and the underline being present by default it only makes sense to remove  which makes it the same as other text  But you ever decide to make your links bold  it ll cause trouble  Netscape 4 might not support the id feature  but still an unknown attribute won t cause any trouble  That s what called compatibility for me

User · Answer

ID method will not work on older browsers  anchor name method will be deprecated in newer HTML versions    I d go with id

User · Answer

The second sample assigns a unique ID to the element in question. This element can then be manipulated or accessed using DHTML.

The first one, on the other hand, sets a named location within the document, akin to a bookmark. Attached to an "anchor", it makes perfect sense.

[html] Should I make HTML Anchors with 'name' or 'id'?

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