HTML table cells & font colors

[Thomas Dowling]

----
From: Diane Madrigal <dmadriga at unix2.nysed.gov>
To: Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at library.berkeley.edu>
Date: Wednesday, June 04, 1997 1:38 PM
Subject: Re: HTML table cells & font colors

>
>On Wed, 4 Jun 1997, Thomas Dowling wrote:
>
>>     <a href="wherever"><font color="white">A Link</font></a> 
>>
>> ..validates against HTML 3.2. 
>
>I thought that other HTML tags were not supposed to be used w/in an
anchor
>tag. Is this wrong? Or is it just another case of Netscape and MSIE
>accommodating (or encouraging) sloppy coding?
>

I believe this was the case with HTML 2.0.  According to the very helpful
guides at http://www.htmlhelp.com, it looks like <A> can include any other
text-level element, though not any block-level element; this also seems to
be true of most other text-level elements.  Hence:

    <h2><a href="bob.html"><b><em><small><big>
    <font color="fuchsia">Bob's Link</font></big></small>
    </em></b></a></h2>

...validates against 3.2 (noting that everything is nested correctly)
while:

    <a href="ray.html"><h2>Ray's Link</h2></a>

....does not.  And yes, you can next BIG inside SMALL (valid HTML can still
be nonsensical).

Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu