So You Want A Page Jump, Huh?

By Joe Burns

I get letters about how to do these internal page jumps all the time. These are a great way to allow people to move quickly inside a long page. I have them all over my HTML Goodies tutorials.

Here's what I'm talking about:

Click Here to visit
the bottom of this page.

Here's how ya do it...

You need to place two items on each page:

1. A basic link command pointing to another section of the page.
2. The point where the page will jump.

Here's the basic link command:

<A HREF="#codeword">Blue Words, Blue Words</A>

Here's how you denote where the jump will scroll the page:

<A NAME="codeword">

Here's what's happening

The A HREF command is the same as a basic link except the link is to a codeword rather than a URL.
PLEASE NOTICE there is a # sign in front of the codeword. You need that to denote it is an internal link. Without the # sign, the browser looks for something outside the page named after your codeword. ...and it ain't gonna be there.
Your "codeword" can be just about anything you want. I try my best to keep it short and make it denote what it is jumping to. There might be a limit to the number of letters you can use--but I haven't found it yet.
The point where the page will jump follows the same general format except you will replace the word HREF with the word NAME.
PLEASE NOTICE there is no # sign in the NAME command.
Note! Where you place the NAME target will appear at the top of the screen browser.

Jumping from another page

Let's say you have a tutorial--much the same as this one--and you will be jumping from page to page. It would make things a lot easier if, when you jump between pages, you could have the jumped-to page load at a specific point rather than loading at the top each time. Well, you can...

See the words "Welcome Back!" a few lines down? Well, I'm going to have you jump to a new page where it will explain the process and then you will jump back so "Welcome Back" appears at the top of the browser screen.

So here we go...

Click Here to Go

Welcome Back!

I knew I'd see you again.

So...do ya got it? Good. Thanks for coming.

Hi There...

...and welcome to the bottom of the page

No, seriously...you're at the bottom of the same page. Look at the scroll bar on the right. Now the square marker is towards the bottom. Do you want to learn how to do this?