Is it possible to have a sticky header, scrolling to anchors all in a responsive layout? - header

Question

I have a responsive layout and I am using sticky.js for my header. This seems to be working minus a few glitches that I can live with. But my anchors are always off (I am using smooth scrolling). I am not sure how to compensate for the sticky header when scrolling to an anchor when the responsive layout is constantly changing the width and height?

Answer 1

Unfortunately there is not a whole lot you can do with straight-CSS which won't distort your design. To tackle this issue in previous projects, I have used jQuery to handle these types of scrolling/anchor issues.
What You Have Now: <a> tags that look for id's on the page. The problem is this: when the site goes responsive, those anchor tags don't line up so nicely with your DOM layout.
My Solution: To give you the high level concept - I used jQuery to modify the ID positions on the fly. Say you click on a link when the site is full-size, and everything is fine. jQuery is not needed here. Now say that when you click that same link when the site was scaled to about the 768px-width range (iPad portrait): then my anchors might look as if they were about 100px off (for example). I wrote a bit of jQuery to handle this: "If the width is __, then offset the anchor ID's by ___px."

Answer 2

I would recommend using JS to account for the difference at time-of-scroll, rather than trying to artificially alter the height property of your anchor tags. Here's a function that might work for you, using pure JS:
adjustScroll = function () {
// Sticky nav selector (you'll have to provide your own selector)
const nav = document.querySelector('header>nav');
if (location.href.indexOf("#") >= 0) {
// Find the name of the anchor
let n = location.href.substr(location.href.indexOf("#")+1);
// Find the anchor by name, if it exists
let a = document.querySelector('a[name="'+n+'"]');
if (!a) {
return;
}
// Set y value as y-value of the anchor, offset by the header height
let y = a.offsetTop;
y -= nav.height + 10;
// Scroll to the y position
window.scrollTo(0, y);
}
}
// Call it wherever you need to call it
adjustScroll();
Examples of where to call it might be on a DOMContentLoaded event, or on an onclick event for anchor tags.