DeepLinks and ScrollAnchor

What are DeepLinks?

To directly quote Wikipedia:

“Deep linking is the use of a hyperlink that links to a specific, generally searchable or indexed, piece of web content on a website (e.g. http://example.com/path/page), rather than the website's home page (e.g., http://example.com). The URL contains all the information needed to point to a particular item.”

Why DeepLinks in Dashboard?

There are many user experiences in Cloudflare’s Dashboard that are enhanced by the use of deep linking, such as:

• We’re able to direct users from marketing pages directly into the Dashboard so they can interact with new/changed features.
• Troubleshooting docs can have clearer, more intently directions. e.g. “Enable SSL encryption here” vs “Log into the Dashboard, choose your account and zone, navigate to the security tab, change SSL encryption level, blah blah blah”.

One of the interesting challenges with deep linking in the Dashboard is that most interesting resources are “locked” behind the context of an account and a zone/domain/website. To illustrate this, look at a tree of possible URL paths into Cloudflare’s Dashboard:

dash.cloudflare.com/ -> root-level resources: login, sign-up, forgot-password, two-factor

dash.cloudflare.com/<accountId>/ -> account-level resources: analytics, workers,  Continue reading