If you use Gmail, you'll see URLs in the address bar like:
https://mail.google.com/mail/#inbox
https://mail.google.com/mail/#starred
If you go to one of these URLs, it will jump straight to the corresponding view.
A similar example is on http://validator.w3.org where the anchors #validate_by_uri
, #validate_by_upload
and #validate_by_input
each auto-focus different tabs.
How are these things done? Does the page use Javascript to detect the anchor then switch view for you? How do you prevent the page scrolling to the anchor position?