Linking to HTML Elements via id Attribute

My coworker Brian Hall and I came across a posting saying “everyone knows this”, and the this was that you can use a hash to link to an id.  Here’s a snippet to demonstrate:

My Page With Internal Links

Navigation

	
A
	
B
	
C


A
Some content here that if relevant to 'A'

B
Some content here that is relevant to 'B'

C
Some content here that is relevant to 'C'

Previously, the way you would do this is to use an a tag with a name value around the h2 elements:

My Page With Internal Links Using Name Attribute
Navigation

	
A
	
B
	
C


A
Some content here that if relevant to 'A'

B
Some content here that is relevant to 'B'

C
Some content here that is relevant to 'C'

The “everyone knows this” technique has many advantages:

• No extraneous a tags that have to be unstyled, because they’re not really links
• Better cooperation with jQuery code because you are now using id attributes
• You can do some nifty styling using the target pseudo class selector