It is often that developers find themselves using the incorrect/inefficient anchor names.
According to W3C, anchor names must observe the following rules:
- Anchor names must be unique within a document
- Begin with a letter (A-Z, a-z) and may be followed by any number of letters, digits (0-9), hyphens ("-"), underscores ("_"), colons (":"), and periods (".")
- Don't add spacings - When you are defining an anchor name, make sure there are no spaces within the name
- Anchor name cannot start with
#
These are the things you should consider when creating an anchor link:
- Make it meaningful - When you are sending the URL by email it helps indicate what you are talking about
- Avoid list numbers - They often change. An anchor like
#13becomes incorrect when the order changes - Know they are case sensitive -
#usergroupsis not the same as#UserGroups. Always check your links and anchor names are identical, matching the capitalization
<a name="1st section"></a>Bad example - Beginning with a number, spaces within, and meaningless anchor name
<a name="get-started"></a>Good example - Beginning with a letter, no spaces, and a meaningful anchor name
