anchors and window.history

[Timo]

Is there any way to jump to an anchor in the current document without
affecting window.history?
Thanks

 

[Ivo]

"Timo" asks

Is there any way to jump to an anchor in the current document without
affecting window.history?

With the IE only method of scrollIntoView(), this is rather easy:

<a href="#jump"
onclick="if(document.getElementById(this.hash.replace(/^#/,''))){
document.getElementById(this.hash.replace(/^#/,'')).scrollIntoView(); return
false; }"

From here</a>

....

<a id="jump">To here.</a>

 

[McKirahan]

"Timo" asks

With the IE only method of scrollIntoView(), this is rather easy:

<a href="#jump"
onclick="if(document.getElementById(this.hash.replace(/^#/,''))){
document.getElementById(this.hash.replace(/^#/,'')).scrollIntoView(); return
false; }"

...

<a id="jump">To here.</a>

This shorter form seems to work too:

<a href="#jump"
onclick="document.getElementById(this.hash.replace(/^#/,'')).scrollIntoView(
)">From here</a>

Any reason not to use it?

 

[Ivo]

This shorter form seems to work too:

<snip>

You just removed the if(...){ } test, as though it was there for no reason.
But there are some things in life that are just not reliable and this is one
of them. If the referred element does not exist for some reason (the page
did fully load for example, it happens on the best machines) an ugly error
may occur if you do not test for its existence before referring to it. This
is one of the most basic programming principles.
One should also test for the existence of the scrollIntoView() method before
using it (I copied the code from a local application, and forgot about
that). BTW, scrollIntoView() is a nice IE feature, but of course focus()
works on most other browsers too.

 

[Timo]

Thanks for the suggestions!
Timo