HTML Guides for xmlns:link

XML namespaces are identified by URI strings that act as unique names. They are never fetched or loaded by the browser — they simply serve as an identifier that must match exactly what the specification defines. The XLink namespace has been defined as http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink since its inception, and changing the protocol to https creates a completely different string that parsers and validators do not recognize.

It’s a common and understandable mistake. Developers are trained to prefer https:// URLs everywhere for security, and many linting tools or habits may encourage automatically converting http:// to https://. However, namespace URIs are a special case where this rule does not apply. The string is purely declarative — no network request is made, and no security benefit comes from using https.

It’s also worth noting that the xmlns:xlink attribute is largely obsolete in modern HTML. When SVG is embedded directly in an HTML5 document, browsers automatically handle namespace resolution. You only need xmlns:xlink when serving SVG as standalone XML (with an .svg file or application/xhtml+xml content type). In most cases, you can simply remove the attribute altogether and use xlink:href or, even better, the plain href attribute, which is now supported on SVG elements like <use>, <image>, and <a>.

Examples

Incorrect: using https:// in the namespace URI

<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
  <use xlink:href="#icon-star"></use>
</svg>

This triggers the validation error because https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink does not match the required namespace identifier.

Fixed: using the correct http:// namespace URI

<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
  <use xlink:href="#icon-star"></use>
</svg>

Preferred: removing the namespace and using plain href

In HTML5, you can drop the xmlns:xlink declaration entirely and use the standard href attribute instead of xlink:href:

<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
  <use href="#icon-star"></use>
</svg>

This is the cleanest approach for inline SVG in modern HTML documents. The xlink:href attribute is deprecated in SVG 2, and all modern browsers support plain href on SVG linking elements.