Understanding a tags in HTML

The a tag is a fundamental HTML element responsible for much of the linking goodn ess that makes HTML great!

Components

Let's take a quick look at how the tag works:

<a href="sourceurl">Displayed Text</a>

As in any tag, there's a basic structure of <tag attr="value">content</tag>. The fantastic, amazing attribute in the a tag is href -- short for "hypertext reference". The href attribute identifies a target URL; when this HTML snippet is displayed in a browser, the browser will direct you to the URL in the href attribute. Let's try it out:

<a href="https://google.com">Google Owns All Your Data</a>

Google Owns All Your Data

As with most HTML tags, the a tag accepts a number of possible attributes. Some of them are used only rarely, but you will often see the target attribute in the real world. THis allows you to specify where to open the link you click on:

• _self means "open here"
• _blank means "open in a new tab"
• _parent means "if you're looking at an internal frame, open this link in the frame's arent tab. Otherwise, just open here like in _self

Try it yourself

You can clone this repository and load a local copy of the tutorial page in your browser to see the tag in action. Then make some changes to the file to learn this yourself!

Learn More

The Mozilla Developer Network has lots more detail about this and every HTML tag!