4.13.6 TITLE attribute

The TITLE attribute to the anchor element is new as of HTML 4. It is thus not extensively used at present, and is little supported by current browsers -- at present it is only supported by Internet Explorer 4.

This attribute is optional, and is informational only. If present its arguement should be the TITLE of the document whose address is given by the HREF attribute. This may be useful for the following:

• A browser may display the title of the document prior to retrieving it. For example the browser could display the titles as a margin note or in a small box while the mouse is over the anchor. Internet Explorer 4, for example, displays the title as "pop-up" help when the mouse pointer hovers above a hypertext link.
• Some documents -- mainly non-HTML documents such as graphics, plain text and Gopher menus, do not come with a title themselves. Therefore putting a title in the link is a way to give them a meaningful label.

Last, if the HREF references a mailto URL, the lynx browser will use the TITLE value as the subject line for the letter. However, note that lynx is the only browser to suppor this functionality.