Quote of the Day
Posted By Russ Emerson on January 19, 2005 at 7:41 pm
When you flirt with death, you run the risk that death has something more serious in mind.
James Taranto, in today’s Best of the Web, the item headlined “The Jerk That Flirts With Death.”
[Hey, Jimmy — ever heard of the HTML <a name=”…”></a> tag? Highly recommended.]
Okay, I’ll ask the stupid question – what does that tag do?
The “a name” tag – commonly called an “anchor” – lets you link to a particular part of a web page. For instance, if you go to
http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/131/mppp-ddr.html
[which happens to be one of the many tech docs I’ve written in my career] you’ll see a table of contents at the top. Each of the links there is “anchored” to a spot lower down in the page. So if you click on “Dialer Profiles” it takes you down the page to
http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/131/mppp-ddr.html#topic3
That means <a name=”topic3″></a> is embedded in the HTML right where the author [me :-)] wanted you to go.
Not only is it useful for tables of contents, but it’s very handy for permalinking to a particular section of a page. That’s why I wish Taranto would add anchors to the BOTW page – so people can link straight to the item in question instead of having to tell people to go to the page and then scroll down.