Alternative to nested anchor tags

Question

I'm trying to build a table where each cell's content is wrapped with an A tag set to full height and width, so that the entire cell is clickable.

But some of the cells need to have additional links in their content.

The solution that immediately jumps out is to nest the A tags, like so:

<td>
   <a href="#" class="cell" >
      Officers include:
      President, Vice president, Secretary, Treasurer,
      <a href="#">7 others</a>
   </a>
</td>

But nested A tags are illegal. Is there any workaround that would allow me to achieve the desired effect?

Answer 1

You could use CSS or JavaScript. I would recommend just using CSS.

CSS

This works in my Firefox using CSS only. Basically I just made all child links (except the big one) have position: relative and set their z-index to higher than the large background link.

HTML

<div>
    Hello, <a href="http://example.com/hello" class="normal">Bob</a>
    <a href="http://example.com" class="big"></a>
</div>

CSS

div {
    position: relative;
}

.big {
  display: block;
  width: 100%;
  height: 100%;
  position: absolute;
  top: 0;
  left: 0;   
  z-index: 0;
}

.normal {
  position: relative;
  z-index: 1;  
}

JavaScript

Attach a click event to the cell, and an event to all child links. Make sure child links events do not bubble up (stopPropagation()).

Answer 2

You probably want something like...

<td>
   <a href="#" class="cell" >
      Officers include:
      President, Vice president, Secretary, Treasurer,
   </a>
   <a href="#">7 others</a>
</td>