> no alternative can provide the same functionality
I agree that real links should always be used to represent links, but if you were to emulate links surely it wouldn't be that hard? Just allow middle-clicking and ctrl-clicking and you should have the basic functionality. Is stuff like the ability to drag a problem?
You can’t even emulate middle-click or Ctrl+click correctly! The best you can do in-page is open(), which will will typically open a new foreground tab; but in typical desktop configurations, middle-click and Ctrl+click will open a new background tab. Users will notice you disrupting their normal workflow of opening a bunch of thing at once and then going through them one by one and get extremely frustrated.
And then beyond that, well. Right click or long press, browser context menu with things like copy, bookmark, open in new tab, open in private window, share… you can’t emulate most of this at all. And hover to see href in the browser’s status bar. And so it goes on.
No, the only acceptable technique is to have the user interact with a real HTML <a>, HTML <area> or SVG <a> element.
I agree that real links should always be used to represent links, but if you were to emulate links surely it wouldn't be that hard? Just allow middle-clicking and ctrl-clicking and you should have the basic functionality. Is stuff like the ability to drag a problem?