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Website Design of In-Page Navigation Links Using Anchor Names for Up, Down, Top, Bottom, and Jump To Links

Technology

Summary. For some online documents, it’s nice to have the entire document contained on a single page.

When documents get too long, it helps to have a table of contents or other navigation on the page to allow easy navigation up and down from the bottom of the page to the top of the page, including links to jump to certain sections of the document.

Instructions. These instructions describe how to implement in-page navigation links. You may need some HTML familiarity to accomplish this.

  1. Top Anchor Name. At the top of your web page (in the HTML code), you’ll want to put the statement <a name=”top”></a> just below the <head> statement. Keep in mind that you’ll probably want to do this just once — for the main header of your website (not for every document you write).
  2. Bottom Anchor Name. At the bottom of your web page (in the HTML code), you’ll want to put the statement <a name=”bottom”></a> just below the <head> statement. Keep in mind that you’ll probably want to do this just once — for the main header of your website (not for every document you write).
  3. Section Anchor Names. Assuming your lengthy document has sections, with subtitle headers at the beginning of each section, place a sec ion name anchor a few inches above where the section begins. Do this by placing <a name=”section”></a> in the HTML code. Replace section with the section name or a reference code you can use later. Using a single word or combination of letters and/or numbers without spaces is best.
  4. Create Links. The links you’ll create in HTML will look like this example: <a href=”#top”>CLICK HERE TO RETURN TO THE TOP OF THE PAGE</a> or if you’re just highlighting text and then clicking a link button to provide a link name, then the link is #anchorname (replace anchorname with the name of the anchor such as top, bottom, or sectionname). The current page URL address is assumed.

Try it Now. To see how this works, you can click these topbottom, and instructions links to jump to the top, bottom, or instructions section of this page.

Enjoy!

By Greg Johnson

Greg Johnson is a freelance writer and tech consultant in Iowa City. He is also the founder and Director of the ResourcesForLife.com website. Learn more at AboutGregJohnson.com