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htmlanchorrelhashbang

Unregistered values of rel attribute in anchor tag

I used rel values in jQuery for the parametrized (#!hashbang) AJAX calls. 

<a id='_qualifier' rel='telephony' href='contact.php'>contact</a>

and with jQuery:

var hashbang = "#!"+$("#_qualifier").attr('rel'); //gives desired result=>"#!telephony"

But, when I validated the page on validator.w3.org, it gave me error:

Bad value #telephony for attribute rel on element a: Keyword #telephony is not registered.

I searched around and according to the HTML5 specs here and here, the rel attribute should have the registered/pre-defined values.

  1. Is there a work around to use custom values for rel in HTML5, without failing the validation?
  2. Is it also invalid for HTML4 doctypes?
Solution

  • You can use custom attributes:

    <a href="#" data-something="telephony">...</a>

    It is HTML5 compliant, but not HTML4 or xHTML. You'll access the attribute just like you did with jQuery.

    You can find more informations on the HTML5 reference.