Community Wishlist Survey 2022/Archive/Button to scroll to top of page

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Button to scroll to top of page

N Incomplete proposal / On roadmap of another team

Example of a wordpress page with a floating button in the bottom right corner to enable navigate to top op page

Problem: When reading long articles or specific chapters in the middle or at the bottom of such articles, I often wish to go to the top of the page to use the search field and must then scroll the whole way up.
Who would benefit: Every reader
Proposed solution: A (floating) button to scroll up to the top of the page as it appears in the low right corner of WordPress pages as soon as you scroll down a page.
More comments:
Phabricator tickets:
Proposer: Christian Ries (talk) 08:06, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Christian Ries Hey there, thanks for submitting this proposal! Could you share screenshots of the problem and describe more details about the instances in which you find yourself wanting to navigate to the top? The details about the pain points always make a proposal stronger! NRodriguez (WMF) (talk) 04:57, 13 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I was about to propose this too. If you are reading far down in a long article and want to go back to the top (say to revisit the Table of Contents or the tab bar or whatever), not every user device and/or browser has a "Home" key or similar. Where this is lacking you have to scroll, scroll, scroll back up. A "^Top" button fixed in one corner of the screen would go there instantly. A screenshot without such a button would not really illustrate the issue. Steelpillow (talk) 10:23, 14 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Copied from duplicate proposal at Special:PermaLink/22597779:

@Shir-El too: something like: w:en:Template:Skip to top and bottom perhaps? Note, while that exists as a template that could be placed on a page, it is not in the software - and for the English Wikipedia, does not have community support for use on articles currently. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:15, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Xaosflux: I didn't know about the template and don't know how it works - if it does. The idea is for a tool that would be available everywhere, just as the scroll-bars are, and would save some of the up-and-down schlep. Cheers! Shir-El too 21:31, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Shir-El too: I understand, look at: w:en:Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals/Journals cited by Wikipedia/Num1 (bottom right corner) - just to see if this is an example of what you are proposing for all pages, or if you are thinking of something else. — xaosflux ^Talk 23:12, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think a user script is better of doing this, enabling it for opt-in. Thingofme (talk) 11:36, 13 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I just looked at the 'Academic Journals' page and it looks like a good solution. Meanwhile I'll try using the Home and End Buttons to see what happens. Thank you and Stay Safe and Well!!! Shir-El too 19:46, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@MusikAnimal (WMF):, @Xaosflux: and @Thingofme: Thank you for your suggestions - although I have no idea what most of them mean; I am not into programming. My thought was for something that would be usable across all Wikis by any Wiki user, a universal tool applicable to any Wiki page, with a minimum of fuss. How it would be implemented I honestly don't know. Stay Safe and Well! Cheers! Shir-El too 14:24, 13 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Christian Ries: I just re-read that your only problem was wanting a quick way to go to the "top of page" - the Home button on most keyboards should provide this functionality in most browsers. — xaosflux ^Talk 02:09, 14 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Not every user device or browser UI has a "Home" function or equivalent. Steelpillow (talk) 10:23, 14 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Technical implementation: Probably the easiest way to implement this would be to add the button to the boilerplate HTML for the page wrapper. It then needs only a little CSS to position the button. (I have begun to do this on my own web site, and it works well). Steelpillow (talk) 10:23, 14 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It would be necessary to make it selectable in the user Preferences, as users who do have a built-in Home function would be irritated by it. One might also consider including positioning options. Steelpillow (talk) 10:23, 14 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
commons:MediaWiki:Gadget-scrollUpButton.js might help you. Copy and paste the code in your common.js. – Kwj2772 (msg) 14:37, 16 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I will check in with the Web team to see if that's something they have been considering and if not why not? In any case I also feel like this could be implemented quickly with CSS. KSiebert (WMF) (talk) 10:51, 19 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Dear everyone who contributed here,

when checking in with the Web team, who would normally work on related tasks, they said it will get less necessary to work on a feature like that since we'll soon have a sticky table of contents (TOC) as a part of the UI which will allow to jump to all sections from all scroll positions. To go back to the top you could click on the first section in the TOC for example. If you are curious how this could work there's a prototype you can access here:

https://di-toc-phase2.web.app/Hokusai

Furthermore you can read about the Desktop improvements here:

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Reading/Web/Desktop_Improvements

It's great to see that until we can use these new features there's a gadget to this as well. Thanks for all your efforts! To make sure we are not working on a wish that will soon be solved otherwise we will archive this wish and hope this makes sense. KSiebert (WMF) (talk) 16:20, 21 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]