Linking in XHTML 2.0

By Micah Dubinko
2005-05-04


How XHTML 2.0 is Changing the Way People Think About Web Linking
As a fundamental part of the Web, hypertext linking has been the subject of repeated attempts at standardization beyond the basic format allowed in simple HTML. Such attempts can be characterized as efforts to balance machine processing ability with authoring convenience. The latest specification in this area, XHTML 2.0, just might have gotten it right.

The one thing basically all Web sites have in common is hyperlinks. Beginning and advanced Web surfers alike rely on links to navigate around the Web. From the earliest days of XML, the standards-builders always considered linking an essential part of their overall story arc -- in fact, the linking specification was once called "Extensible Markup Language (XML): Part 2. Linking" (see Resources).

Web authors are familiar with simple linking markup like that in Listing 1, where href attributes create links that the user can choose to follow, and src attributes create links that usually load automatically.

Listing 1. HTML linking

<a href="http://example.com" rel="example"

        title="link to a remote page">

  <img src="http://example.info/img.png"

        alt="link to a remote image" />

</a>

XHTML version 2.0 preserves the basic approach here, but adds a new twist. The following information is based on the XHTML 2.0 Working Draft of 22 July 2004.

Tutorial Pages:
» How XHTML 2.0 is Changing the Way People Think About Web Linking
» Linking: From Any Element
» The Hypertext Attribute Collection
» The Embedding Attribute Collection
» Are We There Yet?
» Resources


First published by IBM DeveloperWorks

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