a href link for entire div in HTML/CSS

Here is what I am trying to accomplish in HTML/CSS:

I have images in different heights and widths, but they are all under 180x235. So what I want to do is create a div with border and vertical-align: middle them all. I have successfully done that but now I am stuck on how to properly a href link the entire div.

Here is my code:

<div id="parentdivimage" style="position:relative;width:184px;height:235px;border-width:2px;border-color:black;border-style:solid;text-align:center;">
    <div id="childdivimage" style="position:absolute;top:50%;height:62px;margin-top:-31px;">
        <img src="myimage.jpg" height="62" width="180">
    </div>
</div>

Please note that for the sake of copy pasting here easily, the style code is inline.

I read somewhere that I can simply add another parent div on top of the code and then do a href inside that. However, based on some research it won't be valid code.

So to sum it up again, I need the entire div (#parentdivimage) to be a href link.

> UPDATE 06/10/2014: using div's inside a's is semantically correct in HTML5.

You'll need to choose between the following scenarios:

<a href="http://google.com">
    <div>
        Hello world
    </div>
</a>

which is semantically incorrect, but it will work.

<div style="cursor: pointer;" onclick="window.location='http://google.com';">
    Hello world
</div>

which is semantically correct but it involves using JS.

<a href="http://google.com">
    <span style="display: block;">
        Hello world
    </span>
</a>

which is semantically correct and works as expected but is not a div any more.

Why don't you strip out the <div> element and replace it with an <a> instead? Just because the anchor tag isn't a div doesn't mean you can't style it with display:block, a height, width, background, border, etc. You can make it look like a div but still act like a link. Then you're not relying on invalid code or JavaScript that may not be enabled for some users.

Do it like this:

Parentdivimage should have specified width and height, and its position should be:

position: relative;

Just inside the parentdivimage, next to other divs that parent contains you should put:

<a href="linkt.to.smthn.com"><span class="clickable"></span></a>

Then in css file:

.clickable {
  height: 100%;
  width: 100%;
  left: 0;
  top: 0;
  position: absolute;     
  z-index: 1;
}

The span tag will fill out its parent block which is parentdiv, because of height and width set to 100%. Span will be on the top of all of surrounding elements because of setting z-index higher than other elements. Finally span will be clickable, because it's inside of an 'a' tag.

Going off of what Surreal Dreams said, it's probably best to style the anchor tag in my experience, but it really does depend on what you are doing. Here's an example:

Html:

<div class="parent-div">
  <a href="#">Test</a>
  <a href="#">Test</a>
  <a href="#">Test</a>
</div>

Then the CSS:

.parent-div {
  width: 200px;
}
a {
  display:block;
  background-color: #ccc;
  color: #000;
  text-decoration:none;
  padding:10px;
  margin-bottom:1px;
}
a:hover {
  background-color: #ddd;
}

http://jsbin.com/zijijuduqo/1/edit?html,css,output

Two things you can do:

1. Change #childdivimage to a span element, and change #parentdivimage to an anchor tag. This may require you to add some more styling to get things looking perfect. This is preffered, since it uses semantic markup, and does not rely on javascript.

2. Use Javascript to bind a click event to #parentdivimage. You must redirect the browser window by modifying window.location inside this event. This is TheEasyWay^TM, but will not degrade gracefully.

Make the div of id="childdivimag" a span instead, and wrap that in an a element. As the span and img are in-line elements by default this remains valid, whereas a div is a block level element, and therefore invalid mark-up when contained within an a.

put display:block on the anchor element. and/or zoom:1;

but you should just really do this.

a#parentdivimage{position:relative; width:184px; height:235px; 
                 border:2px solid #000; text-align:center; 
                 background-image:url("myimage.jpg"); 
                 background-position: 50% 50%; 
                 background-repeat:no-repeat; display:block; 
                 text-indent:-9999px}

<a id="parentdivimage">whatever your alt attribute was</a>

This can be done in many ways. a. Using nested

<a href="link1.html">
   <div> Something in the div </div>
 </a>

<div onclick="javascript:window.location.href='link1.html' "> 
  Some Text 
</div>

What I would do is put a span inside the <a> tag, set the span to block, and add size to the span, or just apply the styling to the <a> tag. Definitely handle the positioning in the <a> tag style. Add an onclick event to the a where JavaScript will catch the event, then return false at the end of the JavaScript event to prevent default action of the href and bubbling of the click. This works in cases with or without JavaScript enabled, and any AJAX can be handled in the Javascript listener.

If you're using jQuery, you can use this as your listener and omit the onclick in the a tag.

$('#idofdiv').live("click", function(e) {
    //add stuff here
    e.preventDefault; //or use return false
}); 

this allows you to attach listeners to any changed elements as necessary.

I'm surprised no one suggested this simple trick so far! (denu does something similar though.)

If you want a link to cover an entire div, an idea would be to create an empty <a> tag as the first child:

<div class="covered-div">
  <a class="cover-link" href="/my-link"></a>
  <!-- other content as usual -->
</div>

div.covered-div {
  position: relative;
}

a.cover-link {
  position: absolute;
  top: 0;
  bottom: 0;
  left: 0;
  right: 0;
}

This works especially great when using <ul> to create block sections or slideshows and you want the whole slide to be a link (instead of simply the text on the slide). In the case of an <li> it's not valid to wrap it with an <a> so you'd have to put the cover link inside the item and use CSS to expand it over the entire <li> block.

Do note that having it as the first child means it will make other links or buttons inside the text unreachable by clicks. If you want them to be clickable, then you'd have to make it the last child instead.

In the case of the original question:

<div id="parentdivimage" style="position:relative;width:184px;height:235px;border-width:2px;border-color:black;border-style:solid;text-align:center;">
  <a class="cover-link" href="/my-link"></a> <!-- Insert this empty link here and use CSS to expand it over the entire div -->
  <div id="childdivimage" style="position:absolute;top:50%;height:62px;margin-top:-31px;">
    <img src="myimage.jpg" height="62" width="180">
  </div>
  <!-- OR: it can also be here if the childdivimage divs should have their own clickable links -->
</div>

A link with <div> tags:

<div style="cursor: pointer;" onclick="window.location='http://www.google.com';">
     Something in the div 
</div>

A link with <a> tags:

<a href="http://www.google.com">
    <div>
        Something in the div 
    </div>
</a>

I simply do

onClick="location.href='url or path here'"