What are some best practices for inserting a URL in an HTML snippet?

I've looked at Zoho Help articles on navigation-based and functional-based URLs, but I'm still unclear on how to incorporate them in an HTML snippet.

For example,

1. How do I link to a Form or Report from a button element? Can I only do this through  <a> tags and href attributes (e.g. <a href='#Report:My_Report>My Report</a>)?

2. Can I execute a function onClick of an element? If so, what's the syntax?

3. How do I pass parameters to a form or report - do I need to build the full URL and then refer to it or is there a simpler method?

3. Can I embed native Zoho icons instead of e.g. FontAwesome icons? If so, what's the syntax?

ZML makes all this easier, but it's not as interactive as HTML/CSS.