Linking to a specific part of a web page

Question

Just append a # followed by the ID of the <a> tag (or other HTML tag, like a <section>) that you're trying to get to. For example, if you are trying to link to the header in this HTML:

<p>This is some content.</p>
<h2><a id="target">Some Header</a></h2>
<p>This is some more content.</p>

You could use the link <a href="http://url.to.site/index.html#target">Link</a>.

Create a "jump link" using the following format:

http://www.somesite.com/somepage#anchor

Where anchor is the id of the element you wish to link to on that page. Use browser development tools / view source to find the id of the element you wish to link to.

If the element doesnt have an id and you dont control that site then you cant do it.

That is only possible if that site has declared anchors in the page. It is done by giving a tag a name or id attribute, so look for any of those close to where you want to link to.

And then the syntax would be

<a href="page.html#anchor">text</a>

In case the target page is on the same domain (i.e. shares the same origin with your page) and you don't mind creation of new tabs (1), you can (ab)use some JavaScript:

<a href="javascript:void(window.open('./target.html').onload=function(){this.document.querySelector('p:nth-child(10)').scrollIntoView()})">see tenth paragraph on another page</a>

Trivia:

var w = window.open('some URL of the same origin');
w.onload = function(){
  // do whatever you want with `this.document`, like
  this.document.querySelecotor('footer').scrollIntoView()
}

Working example of such 'exploit' you can try right now could be:

javascript:(function(url,sel,w,el){w=window.open(url);w.addEventListener('load',function(){w.setTimeout(function(){el=w.document.querySelector(sel);el.scrollIntoView();el.style.backgroundColor='red'},1000)})})('https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45014240/link-to-a-specific-spot-on-a-page-i-cant-edit','footer')

If you enter this into location bar (mind that Chrome removes javascript: prefix when pasted from clipboard) or make it a href value of any link on this page (using Developer Tools) and click it, you will get another (duplicate) SO question page scrolled to the footer and footer painted red. (Delay added as a workaround for ajax-loaded content pushing footer down after load.)

Notes

• Tested in current Chrome and Firefox, generally should work since it is based on defined standard behaviour.
• Cannot be illustrated in interactive snippet here at SO, because they are isolated from the page origin-wise.
• MDN: Window.open()
• (1) window.open(url,'_self') seems to be breaking the load event; basically makes the window.open behave like a normal a href="" click navigation; haven't researched more yet.

The upcoming Chrome "Scroll to text" feature is exactly what you are looking for....

https://github.com/bokand/ScrollToTextFragment

You basically add #targetText= at the end of the URL and the browser will scroll to the target text and highlight it after the page is loaded.

It is in the version of Chrome that is running on my desk, but currently it must be manually enabled. Presumably it will soon be enabled by default in the production Chrome builds and other browsers will follow, so OK to start adding to your links now and it will start working then.