Make a DIV Into a Link

Question

I am looking for an XHTML 1.1 valid way to make a DIV into a clickable link.

Answer 1

Requires a little javascript. But, your div would be clickable.

<div onclick="location.href='http://www.example.com';" style="cursor:pointer;"></div>

Answer 2

You can't make the div a link itself, but you can make an <a> tag act as a block, the same behaviour a <div> has.

a {
    display: block;
}

You can then set width and height on it.

Answer 3

This is a "valid" solution to achieving what you want.

<style type="text/css">
.myspan {
    display: block;
}
</style>
<a href="#"><span class="myspan">text</span></a>

But most-likely what you really want is to have an <a> tag displayed as a block level element.

I would not advise using JavaScript to simulate a hyperlink as that defeats the purpose of markup validation, which is ultimately to promote accessibility (publishing well-formed documents following proper semantic rules minimizes the possibility the same document will be interpreted differently by different browsers).

It would be preferable to publish a web page that does not validate, but renders and functions properly on all browsers, including ones with JavaScript disabled. Furthermore, using onclick does not provide the semantic information for a screen reader to determine that the div is functioning as a link.

Answer 4

While I don't recommend doing this under any circumstance, here is some code that makes a DIV into a link (note: this example uses jQuery and certain markup is removed for simplicity):

<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery-1.3.2.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">

$(document).ready(function() {
    $("div[href]").click(function () {
     window.location = $(this).attr("href");
    });
});

</script>
<div href="http://www.google.com"&gt;
     My Div Link
</div>

Once again, I wouldn't do this so please don't vote me down. I am simply just trying to answer the question.

Answer 5

if just everything could be this simple...

#logo {background:url(../global_images/csg-4b15a4b83d966.png) no-repeat top left;background-position:0 -825px;float:left;height:48px;position:relative;width:112px}

#logo a {padding-top:48px; display:block;}



<div id="logo"><a href="../../index.html"></a></div>

just think a little outside the box ;-)

Answer 6

This post is Old I know but I just had to fix the same issue because simply writing a normal link tag with the display set to block does not make the whole div clickable in IE. so to fix this issue far simpler than having to use JQuery.

Firstly let us understand why this happens: IE wont make an empty div clickable it only make the text/image within that div/a tag clickable.

Solution: Fill the div with a bakground image and hide it from the viewer.

How? You ask good questions, now listen up. add this backround style to the a tag

> "background:url('some_small_image_path')
> -2000px -2000px no-repeat;"

And there you have it the whole div is now clickable. This was the best way for me cause Im using it for my Photo Gallery to let the user clik on one half of the image to move left/right and then place a small image as well just for visual effects. so for me I used the left and right images as background images anyway!

enter code here

Answer 7

Came here in the hope of finding a better solution that mine, but I don't like any of the ones on offer here. I think some of you have misunderstood the question. The OP wants to make a div full of content behave like a link. One example of this would be facebook ads - if you look, they're actually proper markup.

For me the no-nos are: javascript (shouldn't be needed just for a link, and very bad SEO/accessibility); invalid HTML.

You can see some examples of/variations on my solution on the homepage of http://www.easyodds.com/ (which I built), but in essence it's this:

• Build your panel using normal CSS techniques and valid HTML.
• Somewhere in there put a link that you want to be the default link if the user clicks on the panel (you can have other links too).
• Inside that link, put an empty span tag
• give the panel position:relative

• apply the following CSS to the empty span:

  { position:absolute, width:100%, height:100%, top:0, left: 0, z-index: 1 } edit: added z-index

  It will now cover the panel, and as it's inside an <A> tag, it's a clickable link

• give any other links inside the panel position:relative and a suitable z-index (>1) to bring them in front of the default span link