To maintain the scroll position after postbacks is important for larger web pages in order to let the user know exactly what is going on. It is good usability and something you would expect in modern web applications.
In ASP.NET 1.x you were able to do it simply by setting the SmartNavigation property to true on the page. The problem with SmartNavigation we numerous and did more harm than good. It was not cross-browser and it could mess up your own JavaScript. That’s part of the reason why it has been deprecated in ASP.NET 2.0.
Instead of SmartNavigation, ASP.NET 2.0 introduced the MaintainScrollPositionOnPostBack property, which does exactly what the name applies. It has a much smaller impact on the output and it is cross-browser compliant. There are three ways of applying the property to a web page.
You can set it programmatically
Page.MaintainScrollPositionOnPostBack = true;
In the page declaration
<%@ Page MaintainScrollPositionOnPostback="true" %>
Or in the web.config´s <system.web> section.
<pages maintainScrollPositionOnPostBack="true" />
This feature is an absolute must-have on large web pages built for postback scenarios. The beauty of it is the simplicity and the low impact.
Comments
Ok now that is totally COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL How come I didn't know about this before!!?? Love your blog....keep up your quality posts
It seem that this feature doesn't work when you have a long AJAX UpdatePanel on your form!!!
Eric, the property was probably designed before Microsoft began thinking about AJAX.
you could as well redirect user to x.aspx#aId after postback. you also prevent user "refreshing" the same postback by this way.