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htmlxhtmlw3cw3c-validationsemantic-markup

Can we use <a> directly in the body, or it should always in any block level tag? See example (XHTML)

Which is right? This:

<h2>heading 2</h2>
<p><a href="#" target="_blank" title="Opens in a new window">link 1</a></p>
<h2>heading 2 </h2>
<p><a href="#" target="_blank" title="Opens in a new window">link 2</a></p>
<h2>heading 2 </h2>
<p><a href="#" target="_blank" title="Opens in a new window">link 3</a></p>
<h2>heading 2 </h2>
<p><a href="#" target="_blank" title="Opens in a new window">link 4</a></p>

or this: 

<h2>heading 2</h2>
<a href="#" target="_blank" title="Opens in a new window">link 1</a>
<h2>heading 2 </h2>
<a href="#" target="_blank" title="Opens in a new window">link 2</a>
<h2>heading 2 </h2>
<a href="#" target="_blank" title="Opens in a new window">link 3</a>
<h2>heading 2 </h2>
<a href="#" target="_blank" title="Opens in a new window">link 4</a>
Solution

  • @Jitendra, I agree with your point .. but only if you are using strict.dtd (HTML/XHTML)
    According to W3C recommendation(for strict dtd) .. the tag <a> must be used in a block element.

    Look at the following example:

    <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
 <head>
   <meta content="text/html; charset=utf-8" http-equiv="content-type"/>
   <title>example</title>
 </head>
 <body>You don't have sufficient privileges to access the page.<a href="www.google.co.in">Click here</a> to go back.
 </body>
</html>

    The above code produces error while doing HTML validation .. saying

    document type does not allow element "A" here; missing one of "P", "H1", "H2", "H3", "H4", "H5", "H6", "PRE", "DIV", "ADDRESS" start-tag

    Making the dtd as loose/transitional you can get rid of the error .. For Strict HTML or Strict XHTML this error is obvious ..

    Hope it helped .. :)

    regards-Infant Pro