Why doesn't a:hover work on an anchor without an href attribute?

Question

In my application, I can't get the a:hover css style to work when my anchor tag doesn't have an href attribute.

Is there any reason for this?

Answer 1

IE doesn't support a:hover in a tag without href. You can use href="#" or href="Javascript:void(0);" however this last option probably won't work on IE6 either.

Or use Javascript mouseover/mouseout.

Answer 2

Hover is intended for links. Without the HREF the tag is simply an anchor.

In other words...

<a name="target"></a>

is an ANCHOR within a page that...

<a href="#target">go there</a>

would be a LINK to.

Since ANCHORs don't have visual representation on a page.. a :hover would be useless.