Make elements that behave like anchor tags?

Question

I was wondering, can you make an element that is not an anchor (<a>) tag (for ex. <div>, <span>, etc.) behave like an anchor tag? (Link to page on click).

Or, are there any other elements that behave the same?

Answer 1

Only partially.

• You can give any tag a tabindex to make it focusable.
• You can give any tag a click event listener that sets location.href.
• You can't make anything other than a real link react to :link and :visited in CSS

That leaves aside issues of getting (for example) screen readers to recognise the element as a link and annouce it to the user, and for search engines to recognize it as a link and follow it, and the JS simply failing.

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In short: If you want a link, then use a real link. HTML is a semantic markup language. Use the semantics it comes with. Don't try to fake the behaviour that comes with the semantics using other elements.