Implement anchors so I can directly link to specific parts of a page

[nanometrenat]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. Usability: Many GO pages have multiple sections, and it's useful to be able to provide people with a link that takes them directly to that part of the page. My example today is that I want to share the IM Technical Competency Framework that was added via https://github.com/IFRCGo/go-web-app/issues/566 - but I can't link directly to the Competency Framework heading.

Previous example from a while back was wanting to link directly to Appeal Documents (which can often be below ~6 other sections on the Reports/Documents page). https://github.com/IFRCGo/go-frontend/issues/1012#issuecomment-615147155

Describe the solution you'd like Sections of the page have anchors that I can hover over and get a link - like in many other sites - e.g. this from https://developers.google.com/style/headings-targets

Describe alternatives you've considered My current workaround is to use a browser hack highlight any text on the page and right click then choose "Copy link to highlight". All it does is search for the text - so if the text appears multiple times it will highlight it multiple times - e.g. https://go.ifrc.org/surge/catalogue/information-management#:~:text=IM%20Coordinator has multiple results - but this hack is useful in cases where the text is highly specific and only appears once on the page. It's not intuitive for non-geeks though.

Be great to have this usability support to help us increase adoption of GO by being able to send links to direct people straight to the place on the page that we want them to pay attention to.

[nanometrenat]

One additional use case (that may be slightly more complicated than the above, and is not as critical but still useful): anchors to link to a specific row of the Ops Toolbox - e.g. so we could link to the IM row of the Ops Toolbox from the IM page in CoS (and similarly for the other sectors).

[mariam-yu]

@nanometrenat We could potentially add share options from various modules. We'd need to check that it's not too much. Let us look into it, but wanted to confirm that I understand the use case correctly - ability to link to specific module headers on the pages rather than the entire page. Correct? Thanks.

[nanometrenat]

Thanks @mariam-yu - yes, need to link to specific module headers on the page - so that when sharing links we direct people straight to the section we want them to look at (rather than having to send a link and at the same time say "scroll down to XXX heading")

[nanometrenat]

A good example I have received in a training pack sent to me just now:

go through the Planning and Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting sections of the Operational Toolbox in GO platform.

If you click through you can see that although GO platform is referenced in the text, the links themselves don't go to GO. Direct links to these sections cannot be provided so the training/Ops team had to use Sharepoint links rather than being able to link to the GO platform Ops Toolbox itself.

[mariam-yu]

@nanometrenat Operational Toolbox may be a bit more challenging as it's a graph with a different structure, but we could look into the header sharing. We don't have a proper sharing links yet on GO, but it was in the plans. I will update this thread with some suggestions.

[nanometrenat]

@mariam-yu I happened to spot another example where direct links would be super useful - the Monty API has to describe where on the page to navigate to rather than just giving a single URL:

      {
        "title": "COP28 'All About That Base' Report",
        "description": "A detailed report introducing the Montandon database and demonstrating some of its use-cases, by applying it to provide evidence to support the hypothesis that climate change is not just enhancing the frequency and intensity of climate- and weather-related hazards, but also their impacts. You can find the report in the provided URL, navigate to the section 'Other GO Resources' and you'll see the link to the report, titled COP28 'All About That Base' Report",
        "URL": "https://go.ifrc.org/resources"
      }

[mariam-yu]

Thanks @nanometrenat very helpful!

[mariam-yu]

@nanometrenat how are these 2 options? (cc @tovari ) - not sure on the dev side:

Option 1 - hover next to module title Option 2 - click on the link next to module title