AngularJS - $anchorScroll smooth/duration

Question

Reading the AngularJS docs I haven't figured out if $anchorScroll can have a duration/easing option to smooth scroll to elements.

It only says:

$location.hash('bottom');

// call $anchorScroll()
$anchorScroll();

I do not use jquery and don't want to; is there still a clever yet simple way to make or extend $anchorScroll in order to make scrolling more smooth?

Answer 1

Unfortunately this is not possible using $anchorScroll. As you discovered $anchorScroll doesn't have any options and doesn't work with $ngAnimate. In order to animate the scroll you would need to use your own service/factory or just straight javascript.

For the sake of self-learning I put together an example with a smooth scrolling service. There are probably better ways to do this so any feedback is encouraged.

To scroll to an element you attach a ng-click="gotoElement(ID)" to any element. I think an even better route would be to make this a directive.

Here's the working example on jsFiddle.

Update

There are now a number of third-party directives for accomplishing this.

• https://github.com/oblador/angular-scroll.
• https://github.com/d-oliveros/ngSmoothScroll
• https://github.com/arnaudbreton/angular-smoothscroll
• https://gist.github.com/justinmc/d72f38339e0c654437a2