Prevent page from going to the top when clicking a link - html

Question

How can I prevent the page from "jumping up" each time I click a link? E.g I have a link somewhere in the middle of the page and when I click it the page jumps up to the top.

Answer 1

Is the anchor href="#"? You can set it to href="javascript:void(0);" instead.
If you are going to a prevent default please use this one instead:
event.preventDefault ? event.preventDefault() : event.returnValue = false;

Answer 2

Let's presume that this is your HTML for the link:
Some link goes somewhere...
If you're using jQuery, try like this:
$(document).ready(function() {
$('a#some_id').click(function(e) {
e.preventDefault();
return false;
});
});
Demo on: http://jsfiddle.net/V7thw/
If you're not on jQuery drugs, try with this pure DOM JavaScript:
window.onload = function() {
if(document.readyState === 'complete') {
document.getElementById('some_id').onclick = function(e) {
e.preventDefault();
return false;
};
}
};

Answer 3

It will jump to the top if you set the link href property to # since it is looking for an anchor tag. Just leave off the href property and it won't go anywhere but it also won't look like a link anymore (and make sure to handle the click even in javascript or else it really won't be of much use).
The other option is to handle the click in javascript and inside your event handler, cancel the default action and return false.
e.preventDefault();
return false;