Scrolling “Go To Top” Link Using Dojo

By  on  

One of the most popular code snippets of posted on my blog has been the scrolling "Go To Top" link snippet. The premise of the snippet is simple: once the user scrolls an element (usually the BODY element) past a given threshold, a "Go To Top" anchor fades into view. Simple, stylish, and functional -- the definition of a good JavaScript-powered enhancement. I've showed you how to accomplish this task using jQuery and MooTools; here's how you can accomplish that same effect using Dojo.

The HTML

<a href="#top" id="gototop" class="no-click no-print">Top of Page</a>
<!-- you could also create this dynamically using dojo -->

Just a simple "top" link.

The CSS

	#gototop { visibility:hidden; position:fixed; right:5px; bottom:5px; color:#999; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:none; border:1px solid  #ccc; background:#eee; padding:10px; }

It's important to hide the element during the initial page load.

The Dojo JavaScript

dojo.ready(function() {
	var link = dojo.byId("gototop");
	dojo.style(link,{ opacity: 0, visibility:"hidden" });
	dojo.connect(window,"onscroll",function(e) {
		var scrollY = -dojo.position(dojo.body()).y, thresh = 100;
		dojo.anim(topLink, { opacity: (scrollY > thresh ? 1 : 0 ) });
	});
});

When the DOM is ready we grab the link, styling it so that it will hidden via visibility instead of display. On each scroll of the body, we calculate the position of the page and show or hide the link depending on the page position. Easy!

There you have it. Another framework, another flavor of JavaScript, another awesome snippet. Happy scrolling!

Recent Features

  • By
    Camera and Video Control with HTML5

    Client-side APIs on mobile and desktop devices are quickly providing the same APIs.  Of course our mobile devices got access to some of these APIs first, but those APIs are slowly making their way to the desktop.  One of those APIs is the getUserMedia API...

  • By
    Serving Fonts from CDN

    For maximum performance, we all know we must put our assets on CDN (another domain).  Along with those assets are custom web fonts.  Unfortunately custom web fonts via CDN (or any cross-domain font request) don't work in Firefox or Internet Explorer (correctly so, by spec) though...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    New MooTools Plugin:  ElementFilter

    My new MooTools plugin, ElementFilter, provides a great way for you to allow users to search through the text of any mix of elements. Simply provide a text input box and ElementFilter does the rest of the work. The XHTML I've used a list for this example...

  • By
    External Site Link Favorite Icons Using MooTools and CSS

    I recently came upon an interesting jQuery article about how you can retrieve all external links within a page, build the address of the site's favorite icon, and place the favorite icon along side the link. I've chosen a different approach which...

Discussion

  1. smion

    hey, your demo isn’t working for me (firefox 3.6.3) – the button appears but it doesn’t scroll to top ;)

    ps: it would be VERY helpfull, if you can trans-code this to mootools :-)

  2. @smion: Updated the link. Also — there’s a link to the MooTools version above.

  3. Champ

    Walsh… I am having trouble getting it to go back up. How do you get yours to go up?

  4. Very useful tutorial. I will try to apply it on my blog. Good work.

  5. Catar4x

    I love it ! Thank you David !

    If you can do this for all anchor link, it would be sick !

  6. @Catar4x

    Do you mean something like this?

    http://www.cinsoft.net/mylib-examples.html#scrollinganchors

    PS. Dojo sucks!

  7. Catar4x

    Yeah, David made this one time for Mootools. :)

  8. Manoj

    Thank u so much…Very useful tutorial. I will try to apply it on my blog. Good work

  9. SSK

    Thank you David… simple and nice scroll….

  10. robot

    It works in IE and Firefox, but no in Chrome! How to solve of it? Thanks!

  11. Roman

    it not work in safari too.
    it is bad news for us!

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!