Yes, it does work for player`s character sheets. I`m using it in your game.

The <a> tag has always worked in character sheets for players; it's the one place on RPOL where you can post images and links as a player.

Also worth noting the anchor tag will work in normal messages as well, including between messages.

So if you have a notice thread that's just an info dump for your game, you can make your first post a table of contents, allowing players to jump to the relevant posts rather than scroll down searching or ctrl+f'ing for it.

However, as with most things this will not work between pages of posts, so you can't drop the tag in a post on page 2 and have it link back to a post in page 1.  Though if you "show all", it will work just fine.

They only work in messages if posted by a GM.

I stand corrected then, as now that I think about it I only tested them out as a GM.  So good to know.

In reply to jaberwok (msg # 2):

Thanks I got it to work on the character sheet.
It didn't work on my first attempt. But then I worked out the kinks. Basically it didn't work when I was using a <table> format sheet.

Solution: I used the anchor points outside of the tables and it worked!

Not working so well for me in a character sheet.

I click the link at the top, and it takes me to a place that puts the desired destination/anchor destination four to five lines above the top of the page.

jaberwok put the text in red in msg #2. You'd put the anchor somewhere below in the character sheet (but not in tables). When you click the <a> link at the top of the character sheet, the screen will refresh to the anchor below.

That wasn't really my issue though, but thanks.

Is the functionality supposed to be that you put the anchor well above the destination? Not sure what I could be doing wrong. The link works, it just seems to take me to the wrong place.

Let me try again :)

The <a> which will create a link to the anchor. If there is enough text below the anchor point, then the anchor will be at the top of the text.

On my sheet, the anchor was toward the bottom of the sheet so the screen had the anchor on the middle of my screen... that was until I put in several more lines

In reply to Piestar (msg # 10):

Fixed headers can act strangely in some of the browsers.  The anchor can work correctly but the browser has zoomed to the anchor at the very top of the browser window, which is actually hidden behind the fixed header.  So often you do have to scroll up a little bit.  Odd and annoying.

Okay, no biggy, still a nice feature. I'll just start putting the anchor a few lines higher.

FYI, I'm using Firefox, and Windows 10.

I'd like some clarification on this.

Normally, when I've made tables of contents (like I did for the character sheets in Heaven), I've had to pull up the 'all posts' view, note the post number, then make the link include the 'show all' flag.

Using anchors, what would happen if the anchor is on a different page than the link? Let's have a f'rinstance:

1. Somewhere on page 3, I've tagged an entry with [anchor Foo].
   
2. Back on the first post on page 1, I add <a href=#Foo>Foo</a>.
   
3. ???
   
4. Click!

What happens?

When I tested it on the beta site, a link tag, that pointed to an anchor on another page, just didn't work when you clicked it.  Nothing happened.

Some browsers might treat it differently, maybe scrolling to the bottom of the page or something, but the nature of the anchor tag is such, as I understand it, that the browser's search for the target is by its nature limited to only the html of the page you're on.

Which is why viewing all the messages at once via the "all" link, would enable its function again.

Could we make that the default behavior for anchor tags, then? Refresh the page with everything showing?

-1 from me. :>   I can't see my usage of anchor tags being anything other than navigating on the same page so refresh would be an additional overhead - if the issue is that the thread has so many posts that it needs a show all, then I'd be navigating to the message , not to a point within that message, so I'd be using the &msgpage=&show=all#1  syntax, not the anchor tags.

+1

I would find LonePaladin's idea very useful. An index of information for a game in the first post of a GM created thread would be really helpful.

-1.

Not seeing threads of GM information longer than 25 posts (with anchor tags in them) being common enough that "show all" needs to be the default.

For the few occasions when it would be necessary, the "show all" can be manually inserted into the link.

Edit: Also, with anchor tags, you can just put your index into the first post in a thread, editing it to add new links as required, then add everything into the second post (again editing as required to add new material) and using the links to get to what you're looking for.
This message was last edited by the user at 14:58, Sun 23 Aug 2015.

Ah, but if there's more than 25 posts such that you'd need show all for anchors, then the first post wouldn't be visible on that page, so you'd have to know to/remember to navigate back a page to the index anyway ?

-1.

It would only take one or two such uses of anchors on a 20-30 page thread to get very old, very quickly.

Anchors automatically invoking "all" isn't going to happen.  Firstly that's not what they're designed for, they were actually created for linking within a character sheet, and it was then expanded to include descriptions and GM posts (but the intent was for linking within the post).

Secondly large threads eventually have "all" disabled, so wouldn't even work for them, and then thirdly, I think some people would find it annoying (especially when, as already mentioned, the thread was very long).

Good, I'm not totally insane, that's what I had assumed.

Can I have multiple launch points to the same anchor? I was thinking on my character sheet I would put several links anchored back to the top.

Yes, seems like it.

Thanks!