Why is it bad practice to use links with the javascript: "protocol"?

Posted by zneak on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by zneak
Published on 2010-03-19T18:07:36Z Indexed on 2010/03/19 18:21 UTC
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Hello everyone,

In the 1990s, there was a fashion to put Javascript code directly into <a> href attributes, like this:

<a href="javascript:alert('Hello world!')">Press me!</a>

And then suddenly I stopped to see it. They were all replaced by things like:

<a href="#" onclick="alert('Hello world!')">Press me!</a>

For a link whose sole purpose is to trigger Javascript code, and has no real href target, why is it encouraged to use the onclick property instead of the href property?

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