Attributes

We can change the way many tags behaved using attributes.

For example, we can create a hyperlink using the a (anchor) tag like so:

<a> A Hyperlink </a>

This is nice, but our hyperlink doesn’t currently point at anything. If you click it you will go nowhere. We can fix this using an href (hypertext reference) attribute:

<a href="http://www.google.com"> A Working Hyperlink </a>

You can have as many attributes as you like separated by a space:

<a href="http://www.google.com" title="Search on Google">
  A Working Hyperlink
</a>

Exercise

1. Create a hyperlink that points to yahoo.co.uk
2. You can add more than one attribute. Add a title attribute to your hyperlink. Now when you mouse over it you will see a little popup.

Don’t use styling attributes

There are a great many attributes, some of which affect the behaviour of a tag, and some of which affect it’s appearance. Generally speaking you should not use attributes to change the appearance of an element.

You’ll find some tutorials online suggesting attributes such as:

• color
• background-color
• cell-padding
• border

Never use these. We’ll see why, and we’ll see the correct solution to styling later when we get to CSS.

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