O'Reilly Network: Make Internal Links Scroll Smoothly with JavaScript
Simple ideas make the iWorld go 'round...
When they're navigating through a long document, users often are confused or disoriented when they click on a link that jumps to another location in that same document. Are they on the same page, or a different page? Should they scroll more from here? What's going on? The answer to this problem is to scroll the user through the document to the linked location, as you can see from this demo. In this tutorial, we'll use a smattering of JavaScript to ensure that links that are internal to the document scroll users to their destinations, rather than jumping straight there and confusing site visitors.
I guess in this case the iWorld is going up and down. But thats a good thing... I remember seeing the first attempt at creating "spatial" site maps in late '96. I've seen a million more attempts since then, even some that I thought really had a chance, all-be-it slight, at changing the way we navigate the web. But not one of them has.
Obviously this idea is nothing like the idea of a "spatial" site map. But in ten years this is the first idea related to hyperlinks that I think has staying power. Furthermore I believe we should make absolutely every effort possible to make it universal, embedded directly into the browser source.
IE7 team... Its not too late to include this functionality 'internal' (even if we have to explicity set the flag to true via the settings dialog.)
Mozilla... Given your model, nothing is ever 'too late', now is it... ;)
Opera, Safari/Konqueror?
Either way, Stuart Langridge deserves a phreakin' medal of some sort for this one... Excellent idea!