Description

The HTML element <link> is used to define a link between the current document and an external resource.

It is defined inside the <head> element and can appear any number of times.

The below table summarizes its usage.

Usage Details
Parent Elements <head>
Placement It must be defined within the <head> element.
Contents No, It is an empty element.
Tags Only an opening tag is required.
Versions HTML 2, 3.2, 4, 4.01, 5

Syntax

Here is the basic syntax of the <link> element.

<link href="">

Examples

The element <link> is used to link an external CSS style sheet.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <title>HTML Element - link</title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="/assets/css/default.css">
</head>
<body>
    <h1>Heading</h1>
    <p>Paragraph content goes here.</p>
</body>
</html>

Attributes

The following table shows the list of supported and unsupported attributes for the <link> element.

Attribute Type Details
Element-Specific Attributes The tags <link> has some element-specific attributes listed in the below table.
Global Attributes Like all other HTML tags, the tag <link> supports the HTML Global Attributes.
Event Attributes The tags <link> also supports the HTML Event Attributes.

Here is a list of attributes that are specific to the <link> element.

Attribute Value Description
charset charset Obsolete
Specifies the character encoding of the linked resource.
crossorigin  anonymous
use-credentials		 Specifies how the element handles cross-origin requests.
href URL Specifies the location of a linked document.
hreflang language-code Specifies the language of the linked document when the attribute href is specified.
media media-types Specifies the media to which the linked resource applies. The default value is screen.
rel alternate
author
help
icon
license
next
prefetch
prev
search
stylesheet
tag		 Specifies the relationship of the linked resource to the current document.
This attribute should be used only if the href attribute is present.
rev link-type Obsolete
Describes the relationship of the linked document back to the source document (the opposite of the rel attribute).
sizes  HeightxWidth
any		 Specifies the size of the icons (for rel="icon").
target _blank
_parent
_self
_top
framename		 Obsolete
Defines where to open the linked document specified in the href attribute.
type content-type Specifies the content type of the linked document.
The most common value is text/css, which indicates a Cascading Style Sheet format.

Browser Compatibility

The tags <link> is supported in all modern browsers.

  • Google Chrome 1+
  • Internet Explorer or Edge 3+
  • Firefox 1+
  • Apple Safari 1+
  • Opera 4+

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