What is href="#" and why is it used?

Question

On many websites I see links that have `href="#"`. What does it mean? What is it used for?

Answer 1

The # is usually used with some sort of an id to link to a section of a page. For instance, consider the following HTML layout:

<section>

<a href="#mySection">Go to My Section</a>

<div style="height: 400px;">

A Large Section

</div>

<div style="height: 200px;" id="mySection">

A Smaller Section

</div>

</section>

In this example, clicking on href="#mySection" would bring you to the smaller section. It can be especially useful for one page website layouts where it continually scrolls.

Using href="#" would also generally bring you to the top of the page.

Answer 2

Hi, Rashawn!

In HTML, the href attribute is used to define a URL to be opened when the element is clicked. In developmental stages (as opposed to production), developers use the "#" symbol to simulate a linking effect but that doesn't redirect anywhere.

However, if there is another element in your HTML with an id, using the "#" symbol followed by the element's id would execute a window scroll to the element with said id.