Although several HTML elements and attributes create links to other resources (e.g., the IMG element, the FORM element, etc.), this chapter discusses links and anchors created by the LINK and A elements. The LINK element may only appear in the head of a document. The A element may only appear in the body.

When the A element's href attribute is set, the element defines a source anchor for a link that may be activated by the user to retrieve a Web resource. The source anchor is the location of the A instance and the destination anchor is the Web resource.

The retrieved resource may be handled by the user agent in several ways: by opening a new HTML document in the same user agent window, opening a new HTML document in a different window, starting a new program to handle the resource, etc. Since the A element has content (text, images, etc.), user agents may render this content in such a way as to indicate the presence of a link (e.g., by underlining the content).

When the name or id attributes of the A element are set, the element defines an anchor that may be the destination of other links.

Authors may set the name and href attributes simultaneously in the same A instance.

The LINK element defines a relationship between the current document and another resource. Although LINK has no content, the relationships it defines may be rendered by some user agents.