Links:
Isn’t .search a method of the location object? I don’ think that would work with an href attribute?

Not sure on the most effective way of adding an array of objects?

Anchors:
I’ve just replaced that with adding an icon after the heading. You couldn’t tab to the hidden link, which is why I went down the onfocus route. Although now I’ve sidestepped the issue, it was interesting how browsers dealt with that.

Quotes:
I do like the large hit-area, and you couldn’t wrap a link around the paragraphs and other block level elements. Still, it’s not a clear cut improvement, depending on your browser.

Also, I notice you’re writing a new function for every type, what happens when you have multiple types with the same icon (images, and music formats for example)? You might want to store an array of extensions to match, with their respective icon paths and alt texts.

Anchors:
I find that when tabbing through the page, I get two highlights around heading anchors, on around both the heading and link, another around just the link. Selecting the former does nothing , the latter brings that heading to the top of the page (which is nice ).

Could you remove the keyboard events from the heading, as people will be able to tab onto the link anyway.

Quotes:
To avoid the middle-click problem, couldn’t you remove the click function from the blockquote, as the link works well by itself.
I know this would remove the clickability of the whole blockquote, the only solution I can think of is putting the link around the whole thing, or finding some way pass the keyboard and mouse events from the blockquote through to the link.