HTML - <a>

Examples

<!-- anchor linking to external file -->
<a href="http://www.mozilla.com/">
External Link
</a>

<a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/" target="_blank">
  <img src="https://mdn.mozillademos.org/files/6851/mdn_logo.png" alt="MDN logo" />
</a>

<a href="mailto:nowhere@mozilla.org">Send email to nowhere</a>

<a href="tel:+491570156">+49 157 0156</a>

var link = document.createElement('a');
link.innerHTML = 'download image';

link.addEventListener('click', function(ev) {
    link.href = canvas.toDataURL();
    link.download = "mypainting.png";
}, false);

document.body.appendChild(link);

Description  

The HTML Anchor Element (<a>) defines a hyperlink to a location on the same page or any other page on the Web. It can also be used (in an obsolete way) to create an anchor point—a destination for hyperlinks within the content of a page, so that links aren't limited to connecting simply to the top of a page.

<a href="https://developer.mozilla.org">MDN</a>

Browser Compatibility  

[1] Starting from Gecko 41 (Firefox 41.0 / Thunderbird 41.0 / SeaMonkey 2.38), <a> without href attribute is no more classified as interactive content. Clicking it inside <label> will activate labelled content (bug 1167816).

[2] Disabled by default

[3] Implemented behind a flag.

[4] Behind the network.http.enablePerElementReferrer preference, that default to false. From Firefox 42 to Firefox 44, the attribute was called referrer.

[5] Attempting to download data URIs causes Edge to crash until v14.14357.

Notes  

The following are reserved browser key bindings for the two major browsers and should not be used as values to accesskey: a, c, e, f, g, h, v, left arrow, and right arrow.

HTML 3.2 defines only name, href, rel, rev, and title.

The target attribute is not defined in browsers that do not support frames, such as Netscape 1 generation browsers. Furthermore, target is not allowed under strict variants of XHTML but is limited to frameset or transitional forms.

JavaScript recommendations

It is often the case that an anchor tag is used with the onclick event. In order to prevent the page from refreshing, href is often set to either "#" or "javascript:void(0)". Both of these values can lead to some unexpected errors when copying links and opening links in a new tab and/or window. Be aware of this for usability reasons, and when users do use anchor tags and you prevent default behavior.

See Also  

• Other elements conveying text-level semantics: <abbr>, <em>, <strong>, <small>, <cite>, <q>, <dfn>, <time>, <code>, <var>, <samp>, <kbd>, <sub>, <sup>, <b>, <i>, <mark>, <ruby>, <rp>, <rt>, <bdo>, <span>, <br>, <wbr>.

Specifications  

Whether clicking on an <a> causes it to (by default) become focused varies by browser and OS.

License