Question

As you all know, it’s extremely common to have code like this:

<a href='#' class='edit'>Edit</a>

Which is then hooked up to an event handler (using jQuery or whatever’s hip these days)

or even with inline js handlers

<a href='#' onclick='editThis()'>Edit</a>

I know it’s a lazy way to show the pointer/hand cursor on the link but that can easily be corrected with just this css:

  a {
       cursor:pointer;
  }

(Which takes less time to write once in the stylesheet than writing href=’#’ on every link)

Having href='#' also has the annoying inconvenience of causing the browser to jump to the top of the page if for some reason the handler hasn’t had a chance to attach itself to the element (mouse trigger happy user, the impatient type, …)

My question, is there a particular good reason to keep using the href='#' ?

Would removing it break some browser behaviour in a few particular contexts?

EDIT: I’m getting some really random answer for this question, maybe I should clarify.

The question is: if I set the hand cursor (and underline and color – thanks Borealid) via css, can I get rid of the href attribute altogether

This question is NOT about what the best href is or how one should attach event handlers

Answer 1

in general I don’t use a tags for js calls, its sloppy and gives the response you’re talking about. If I am doing an anchor totally use it, but if you’re not just use a class as your selector and do the rest in css.