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In page links and the back button - expected behavior

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From: Birkir R. Gunnarsson
Date: Feb 22, 2019 9:41AM

Hey folks

I have a conundrum I wantd y'all's thought on.
Some of our pages have in-page links. The links are actually
implemented with JavaScript so when user clicks the link the focus
gets moved to the corresponding section of the page, but the URL of
the page is not updated.

This works fine when user clicks the link, but if the user expects to
use the back button to jump to the top of the page this will not work,
the user will navigate back to the last page the user was looking at.

The question is, is this a problem? Do users typically use the back
button to navigate from an inpage target back to the top of the page.
I know personally I never do it, but I also realize I am but one
person, and also kind of weird.
We're going to do some usability testing with this, but I am curious
what people's expectations and usage patterns are and if you have some
input.
Thanks
-Birkir


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