IT Anawer: Is the 'name' attribute considered outdated for <a> anchor tags?

Visual Studio doesn't like on-page anchor tags:

Validation (XHTML 1.0 Transitional): Attribute 'name' is considered outdated. A newer construct is recommended.

I'm using name attributes in this way…

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemalocation="http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/SCHEMA/xhtml11.xsd" xml:lang="en">
    ...
    <body>
        ...
        <p>On this page&hellip;</p>
        <ul>
            <li><a href="#one">Section One</a></li>
            ...
        </ul>
        ...
        <h2><a name="one">Section One</a></h2>
        ...
    </body>
</html>

Is there really a more-modern way of doing this? Or is Visual Studio full of crap?

From stackoverflow

I believe the proper way to do it is <a id="one">
name attributes are deprecated in XHTML 1.0 - you can use an id attribute in the same way though, see Fragment Identifiers in the HTML Compatibility Guidelines of the XHTML spec.

So you can simply use
```
<h2><a id="one">Section One</a></h2>
```
But note that the 1.0 spec recommends playing it safe with something like this:
```
<h2><a name="one" id="one">Section One</a></h2>
```
However, your fragment uses XHTML 1.1, where the name attribute has been entirely removed from a and map elements - so you can only use an id.

Jörg W Mittag : Actually, the fragment in the question is XHTML 1.1, which means that `name` is not just deprecated, it's plain illegal.

Paul Dixon : Well spotted, I missed that he was using 1.1 - will amend answer

R. Bemrose : I'm assuming 1.1 still has the name attribute for the input tag, though... I don't have time to check it at the moment.

R. Bemrose : I should explain why I assume it still have the name attribute for input: radio buttons all have the same name, and checkboxes are also allowed to have the same name to have their values grouped together.

Paul Dixon : sorry, yes I overstated - it's removed from a and map tags
I believe the modern approach is to use the id attribute, which would be evaluated as an anchor. For example, if you changed
```
<h2><a name="one">Section One</a></h2>
```
to
```
<h2><a id="one">Section One</a></h2>
```
You would still address it as page.html#one.
You should use the id attribute instead. Works the same way, and you don't need an artifical <a name=...>, but simply
```
<h2 id="one">Section One</h2>
```
Yes it is outdated. You should replace with the "id" attribute.

Quoting w3schools page:

"The id Attribute Replaces The name Attribute HTML 4.01 defines a name attribute for the elements a, applet, frame, iframe, img, and map. In XHTML the name attribute is deprecated. Use id instead."

http://www.w3schools.com/Xhtml/xhtml_syntax.asp

You can also link on a section header :

<P>
    <A href="#section1">Introduction</A><BR>
    <A href="#section2">Some background</A><BR>
    <A href="#section2.1">On a more personal note</A><BR>
    ...the rest of the table of contents...
    ...the document body...

    <H2 id="section1">Introduction</H2>
    ...section 1...

    <H2 id="section2">Some background</H2>
    ...section 2...

    <H3 id="section2.1">On a more personal note</H3>
    ...section 2.1...

[...]
</P>

Source: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/links.html

name= attributes are for labeling elements in a form, and can only be used on <form> elements (input, textarea, select etc). For everything else, ID= is used. Exactly why the W3C folks thought two different ways of naming an element (with different sets of allowable characters) were needed is not readily known.

IT Anawer

Monday, April 11, 2011

Is the 'name' attribute considered outdated for <a> anchor tags?

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