Overengineered Anchor Links

Posted by matser 4/3/2025

Overengineered Anchor Links(thirty-five.com)

392 points | 153 commentspage 3

hoten 4/4/2025|

Another potential option is to allow for multiple "active" states (everything in view). If the content is long enough, it can kinda work out. As you transition from one section to the next, both headers would be "active". For short content it would highlight too much though.

snake-y example: https://zquestclassic.com/releases/2.55.0/

soneca 4/3/2025||

Nice read. Although I much prefer the first solution, the hotfix of adding extra padding to the bottom. UX-wise, not just because it is simpler.

On large screens I prefer to not read texts at the bottom (I always scroll things enough so I am looking at them at the middle or top of the screen). Also, the positioning of the heading relatively to the screen is always the same on every scroll.

noahjk 4/3/2025|

While I usually detest giant footers, this is one use-case they lend benefit to, without causing a large empty space (which some people would then want to fill with an image). I agree from a UX perspective that I prefer when sites act the way I expect them to, and not try to do novel calculations of stuff (minus usability stuff like the ‘dead zone’ dropdown menu polygon calculation). On most pages, I expect a reading section to start when I scroll past a heading, and I prefer anchors to deliver the heading at the top of my viewport.

crooked-v 4/4/2025||

I find this layout extremely weird and distracting to the point that I couldn't manage to get through the article at all. I would much rather have the fancy stuff as inline callouts, with none of the giant attention-grabbing bright buttons in the middle of the text.

Philip-J-Fry 4/3/2025||

Sounds like a nice solution.

Seems like if you open the "he thinks" image thing at the bottom, and then go back to the "beautiful" result, then it no longer works and the Conclusion heading doesn't get activated. That's how I reproduced it anyway.

porridgeraisin 4/4/2025||

On Android, both the first and last example scroll to "Conclusion" in the exact same way for me, and the heading shows up in the same place within the div they are showing the examples in.

jineshkrishnan 4/4/2025||

Nicely presented article. The way anchor opens up and not letting go the context is good. Overall visual and the ease to access information is appreciated.

watersb 4/3/2025||

As of iOS 18.4, macOS 15.4, Details/Summary HTML tags can be styled with CSS.

Which might be an approach for the first few examples.

I am sure there are other cases that would need anchors.

sntran 4/3/2025||

The new CSS Overflow Specification 5 has scroll-marker that can replace anchor link. From my short test in Chrome 135, they seem to scroll to the right place.

asynchronousx 4/3/2025||

Just came to say the blog site itself is awesome, I’d advocate for opening the diagrams automatically on mobile, they’re amazingly slick.

layer8 4/3/2025|

I missed that there were diagrams because I immediately activated reader mode at the top.

JackYoustra 4/3/2025|

Fantastic blog post. I love constrained optimization, it's always pretty to throw a solver at a well-defined problem

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