HTML ยท Module 05 ยท Lesson 20 of 54

The Anchor Element (a)

What is an Anchor Element?

Think of a portal door in a sci-fi movie. When you step through it, you are instantly transported to a different city or even another planet. In HTML, the <a> (Anchor) tag is that portal door. It creates a clickable hyperlink that takes visitors to another webpage, another website, or a different section of the same page.

To make a link work, we use the href (Hypertext Reference) attribute. This specifies the destination URL. If you want the link to open in a brand new browser tab instead of replacing your current page, you add the target="_blank" attribute.

Why does it matter?

The World Wide Web is called a "web" because pages are connected together by hyperlinks. Without links, every page would be a dead-end island, and visitors wouldn't be able to browse or navigate your site.

How to write it

Wrap the text you want the user to click inside opening and closing <a> tags, and specify the destination URL in the href attribute:
<a href="https://google.com" target="_blank">Search</a>
In this example:
  • href="https://google.com" tells the browser where to go.
  • target="_blank" tells it to open in a new tab.
  • Search is the clickable text displayed to the visitor.
  • Common Mistakes

  • Forgetting the href attribute: Writing <a>Search</a> creates text that looks like a link but does absolutely nothing when clicked.
  • Leaving out https:// for external links: If you write href="google.com", the browser will think it's a relative path on your own server (e.g., yoursite.com/google.com) and throw a 404 error. Always include the protocol (e.g., https://).
  • Quick Reference

  • <a href="URL"> โ€” Creates a hyperlink.
  • target="_blank" โ€” Opens the link in a new tab.
  • Your Task
    Create an anchor link `<a>` pointing to 'https://google.com', opening in a new tab, containing the text 'Search'.
    index.html
    Type code above to start the lesson.
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