How to disable anchor "jump" when loading a page?

Question

Does your fix not work? I'm not sure if I understand the question correctly - do you have a demo page? You could try:

if (location.hash) {
  setTimeout(function() {

    window.scrollTo(0, 0);
  }, 1);
}

Edit: tested and works in Firefox, IE & Chrome on Windows.
Edit 2: move setTimeout() inside if block, props @vsync.

See my answer here: Stackoverflow Answer

The trick is to just remove the hashtag ASAP and store its value for your own use:

It is important that you do not put that part of the code in the $() or $(window).load() functions as it would be too late and the browser already has moved to the tag.

// store the hash (DON'T put this code inside the $() function, it has to be executed 
// right away before the browser can start scrolling!
var target = window.location.hash,
    target = target.replace('#', '');

// delete hash so the page won't scroll to it
window.location.hash = "";

// now whenever you are ready do whatever you want
// (in this case I use jQuery to scroll to the tag after the page has loaded)
$(window).on('load', function() {
    if (target) {
        $('html, body').animate({
            scrollTop: $("#" + target).offset().top
        }, 700, 'swing', function () {});
    }
});

There are other ways of tracking what tab you're on; perhaps setting a cookie, or a value in a hidden field, etc etc.

I would say that if you don't want the page jumping on load, you would be better off using one of these other options rather than the hash, because the main reason for using the hash in preference to them is to allow exactly what you're wanting to block.

Another point - the page won't jump if your hash links don't match the names of the tags in the document, so perhaps if you want to keep using the hash you could manipulate the content so that the tags are named differently. If you use a consistent prefix, you will still be able to use Javascript to jump between then.

Hope that helps.

I used dave1010's solution, but it was a bit jumpy when I put it inside the $().ready function. So I did this: (not inside the $().ready)

    if (location.hash) {               // do the test straight away
        window.scrollTo(0, 0);         // execute it straight away
        setTimeout(function() {
            window.scrollTo(0, 0);     // run it a bit later also for browser compatibility
        }, 1);
    }