CSS Background Image as a Link?

I'm just getting into W3C validation; so as you can imaging, I'm really digging the stronger reliance on CSS markup. But does anyone know if it's possible to have a background image as a link?

I don't mean setting the background link and then having a transparent .gif over it to activate the hit. I'm talking the actual background image is the link.

You're thoughts...

"background image" is just a property of an element.
You can turn any element into a link, therefore you can have a link with any background you like.
It all depends on the effect/design you're trying to achieve - it's just a matter of combining html with css...

You can just give a link a block display and a width and height..

eg

Code: Select all

a.background
{
    display: block;
    width: 100px; /*width of image */
    height: 100px; /* height of image */
    background-image: url(this.jpg);
}

Using a link with a class="background" will place a 100 X 100 px link on the page with the background image as this.jpg..

Wouldn't it be better to just wrap and image tag with <a></a> though?

I'd agree with Rakuli. Plus if someone has images turned off, they'll still be able to see the alt text of your <img>.

Ooh, I like that a lot... Thank so much. I'm goint to try it out now...

You guys rock.
Thx.