Smooth scroll to page section with jQuery

This post was originally published on attacomsian.com/blog.

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For one page templates and websites, it is a common practice to scroll to a page section when clicking on an anchor link. Here is a little jQuery hack I often use to smoothly scroll to a page section when a visitor clicks on the anchor link in the navigation menu (or anywhere else in the page). Adjust the scroll speed value 1000 to whatever the speed you want to. This value is in milliseconds.

$(document).on('click', 'a[href^="#"]', function (e) {
    e.preventDefault();
    $('html, body').stop().animate({
        scrollTop: $($(this).attr('href')).offset().top
    }, 1000, 'linear');
});

Here is how the HTML markup looks like for navigation and sections:

<nav>
  <a href="#features">Features</a>
  <a href="#faq">FAQ</a>
  <a href="#pricing">Pricing</a>
</nav>
<!--main container-->
<div class="container">
    <!--feature section-->
    <section id="features">...</section>
    <!--faq section-->
    <section id="faq">...</section>
    <!--pricing section-->
    <section id="pricing">...</section>
</div>

Don't want to use jQuery? You can use vanilla JavaScript too for smooth scrolling but it might not work in old browsers:

document.querySelectorAll('a[href^="#"]').forEach($anchor => {
    $anchor.addEventListener('click', function (e) {
        e.preventDefault();
        document.querySelector(this.getAttribute('href')).scrollIntoView({
            behavior: 'smooth',
            block: 'start' //scroll to top of the target element
        });
    });
});

Not a big fan of vanilla JavaScript either? Here is pure CSS 3 solution but it only works in the latest browsers:

body {
    scroll-behavior: smooth;
}

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Comments

[Yan Susanto]

Hi Atta,

May I ask if it is possible to control the speed using vanilla JS?

Thanks!