Fixed position navbar obscures anchors [duplicate]

You could just use CSS without any javascript.

Give your anchor a class:

<a class="anchor" id="top"></a>

You can then position the anchor an offset higher or lower than where it actually appears on the page, by making it a block element and relatively positioning it. -250px will position the anchor up 250px

a.anchor {
    display: block;
    position: relative;
    top: -250px;
    visibility: hidden;
}

I found this solution:

<a name="myanchor">
    <h1 style="padding-top: 40px; margin-top: -40px;">My anchor</h1>
</a>

This doesn't create any gap in the content and anchor links works really nice.

I was looking for a solution to this as well. In my case, it was pretty easy.

I have a list menu with all the links:

<ul>
<li><a href="#one">one</a></li>
<li><a href="#two">two</a></li>
<li><a href="#three">three</a></li>
<li><a href="#four">four</a></li>
</ul>

And below that the headings where it should go to.

<h3>one</h3>
<p>text here</p>

<h3>two</h3>
<p>text here</p>

<h3>three</h3>
<p>text here</p>

<h3>four</h3>
<p>text here</p>

Now because I have a fixed menu at the top of my page I can't just make it go to my tag because that would be behind the menu.

Instead, I put a span tag inside my tag with the proper id.

<h3><span id="one"></span>one</h3>

Now use 2 lines of CSS to position them properly.

h3{ position:relative; }
h3 span{ position:absolute; top:-200px;}

Change the top value to match the height of your fixed header (or more). Now I assume this would work with other elements as well.

As this is a concern of presentation, a pure CSS solution would be ideal. However, this question was posed in 2012, and although relative positioning / negative margin solutions have been suggested, these approaches seem rather hacky, create potential flow issues, and cannot respond dynamically to changes in the DOM / viewport.

With that in mind I believe that using JavaScript is still (February 2017) the best approach. Below is a vanilla-JS solution which will respond both to anchor clicks and resolve the page hash on load (See JSFiddle). Modify the .getFixedOffset() method if dynamic calculations are required. If you're using jQuery, here's a modified solution with better event delegation and smooth scrolling.

(function(document, history, location) {
  var HISTORY_SUPPORT = !!(history && history.pushState);

  var anchorScrolls = {
    ANCHOR_REGEX: /^#[^ ]+$/,
    OFFSET_HEIGHT_PX: 50,

    /**
     * Establish events, and fix initial scroll position if a hash is provided.
     */
    init: function() {
      this.scrollToCurrent();
      window.addEventListener('hashchange', this.scrollToCurrent.bind(this));
      document.body.addEventListener('click', this.delegateAnchors.bind(this));
    },

    /**
     * Return the offset amount to deduct from the normal scroll position.
     * Modify as appropriate to allow for dynamic calculations
     */
    getFixedOffset: function() {
      return this.OFFSET_HEIGHT_PX;
    },

    /**
     * If the provided href is an anchor which resolves to an element on the
     * page, scroll to it.
     * @param  {String} href
     * @return {Boolean} - Was the href an anchor.
     */
    scrollIfAnchor: function(href, pushToHistory) {
      var match, rect, anchorOffset;

      if(!this.ANCHOR_REGEX.test(href)) {
        return false;
      }

      match = document.getElementById(href.slice(1));

      if(match) {
        rect = match.getBoundingClientRect();
        anchorOffset = window.pageYOffset + rect.top - this.getFixedOffset();
        window.scrollTo(window.pageXOffset, anchorOffset);

        // Add the state to history as-per normal anchor links
        if(HISTORY_SUPPORT && pushToHistory) {
          history.pushState({}, document.title, location.pathname + href);
        }
      }

      return !!match;
    },

    /**
     * Attempt to scroll to the current location's hash.
     */
    scrollToCurrent: function() {
      this.scrollIfAnchor(window.location.hash);
    },

    /**
     * If the click event's target was an anchor, fix the scroll position.
     */
    delegateAnchors: function(e) {
      var elem = e.target;

      if(
        elem.nodeName === 'A' &&
        this.scrollIfAnchor(elem.getAttribute('href'), true)
      ) {
        e.preventDefault();
      }
    }
  };

  window.addEventListener(
    'DOMContentLoaded', anchorScrolls.init.bind(anchorScrolls)
  );
})(window.document, window.history, window.location);