Improvement: Prevent full-page reload when clicking active navigation links

[alankritdabral]

Issue

Clicking a navigation item for the page you are already on triggers a full-page reload instead of simply moving the user to the top of the page.

This is most noticeable in the sidebar, where the page reload causes a brief flash while the sidebar reinitializes and collapses again. The same behavior also exists in the top navigation for active items, active dropdown items, and the homepage logo when already on the landing page.

Affected areas

• Sidebar active link
• Top navigation active link
• Top navigation active dropdown link
• Navbar brand/logo on the homepage

Proposed fix

• Add a shared top-of-page anchor such as id="page-top" to the main layouts.
• For active navigation entries, use href="#page-top" instead of linking back to the same permalink.
• Add aria-current="page" for the active link where appropriate.

Screencast.from.2026-04-15.18-18-08.mp4

[precice-bot]

This issue has been mentioned on preCICE Forum on Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://precice.discourse.group/t/gsoc-2026-introduction-alankrit-dabral/2895/5