my question is about this website - http://www.bits-apogee.org/2011/
whenever you click on the link in the side navigation bar, the middle part of the website is dynamically loaded. Also, the url also changes, everything else remains unchanged. how is this done?
is this some query plugin?
I totally agree with #JMCCreative. It looks like it's an actual refresh. You should look at the following post on StackOverflow.
Modify the URL without reloading the page
The site is using Hashes (#) in the URL to denote the new content being loaded.
This is useful for people bookmarking dynamically loaded content (normally hashes load to specific areas on a page, named anchors or ID's for new browsers), because they don't trigger the page to refresh...
http://www.highrankings.com/urls-with-hashtags-307 there are drawback (SEO) concerns to this... however you will notice more and more sites doing it so i would assume the SEO robots will get better.
There are 2 possibilities:
You can use the HTML5 capabilities to change the url (history pushState), however this feature isn't available in all browsers yet. For more information, look at this SO post: Is there a way to change the browser's address bar without refreshing the page? .
You can use a hashtag (#) part as fall back for browsers who don't have above feature yet.
If you use jQuery, you can use the handy plug-in jQuery Address. This will take care of both above cases.
They're not using a plugin. They're doing an ajax request to a URL like this:
http://www.bits-apogee.org/2011/getcontent/?even=Rachel+Armstrong
and dumping the overview in the container.
The circle of this type of process is usually like this:
listen for link clicks
on click, prevent default on event.
user window.history.pushState to update url
some other code - hears new history
generates a url to get the content.
ajax load the url
dump the data into a container
2 Libraries I have used, both are easier than the above, as they rely on loading a regular html page via AJAX instead the example site you point to, which used a JSON format to get the data.
Pjax - update peices of the page, by pulling that HTML node from a different URL.
Ajaxify - easiest solution, you could do that effect on an HTML site in 10 minutes.
Related
I realized that many of web app use # in their app's URL.
For example, Google Analytics.
This address is in the URL bar when I am viewing the visitor's language page:
https://www.google.com/analytics/web/?hl=en#report/visitors-language/a33185827w60383872p61754588/
This address is in the address bar when I am viewing the visitors' geolocation page:
https://www.google.com/analytics/web/?hl=en#report/visitors-geo/a33185827w60383872p61754588/
I think that this is the Google Analytics web app passing #report/visitors-language and #report/vistiors-geo.
I know that Google analytics is using an <iframe>. It seems that only the main content box is changing when displaying content.
Is # used because of the <iframe> functionality?
There are several answers but none cover the backend part.
Here is a URL, one from your own example:
www.google.com/analytics/web/?hl=en#report/visitors-language/a33185827w60383872p61754588/
You can think about the post-hash (including the hash #) part as a client-side request.
The web server will never know what was entered after the hash sign. It is the browser pointing to a specific ID on the page.
For basic web pages, if you have this HTML: <a name="main">welcome</a>
on a web page at www.example.com/welcome, going to www.example.com/welcome#main will scroll your browser viewport to the welcome text in the <a> HTML tag.
The web server will not know whether #main was in the URL or not.
Values in the URL after a question mark are called URL parameters, e.g. www.example.com/?foo=bar. The web server can deliver different content based on those values.
However, there is a technology developed by Google called AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) that makes use of the # part in the URL to deliver different content without a page load. It's not using an <iframe>.
Using JavaScript, you can trigger a change in the URL's post-hash part and make a request to the server to get a specific part of the page, for example for the URL www.example.com/welcome#main2 Even if an element named #main2 does not exist, you can show one using JavaScript.
A hashbang is #!. It is used to make search engine indexing easier by indicating that this part is a dynamic web page.
This is the "hash" in the url.
Many browsers support hash change event in javascript.
as per my knowledge the hash change is the revolution in the ajax callbacks.
as such when the user interacts with the any link with a hash then on the hash change the event is fired and you can apply any thing with the javascript.
one more thing is that hash change is supported by the browser history.
see below URL
SEO and the use of !# in a url
or Read it
'#! is called a "hashbang" and they are the root of all that is evil in web development.'
Basically, weak web developers decided to use #anchor names as a kludgy hack to get "web 2.0" things to work on their page, then complained to google that their page rank suffered. Google made a work around to their kludge by enabling the hashbang.
Weak web developers took this work around as gospel. Don't use it. It is a crutch.
Web development that depends on hashbangs is web-development done wrong.
This article is far more well worded than I could ever be, and deals with the Gawker media fiasco from their migration to a (failed) hashbang centric website. It tells you WHAT is happening and why it's bad.
http://isolani.co.uk/blog/javascript/BreakingTheWebWithHashBangs
Correct me if I'm wrong, the hashtag in that URL would be used as an anchor to scroll the page to an element with an id. For example, I send you to the url http://example.com/sample#example, and the page would scroll (just display) at the element (I'm using a div as an arbitrary example, it could be anything).
Ajax and hash mark in the url mostly used for quick action.
If you have a part in your site that can be visible only by fire event (mostly click) - it would be hard to share it. With hash mark in the url you can (by javascript) make the browser think that you did the required action and it will display the relevant part.
Normally the '#' is using in url will find the particular id which is next to '#' in that particular page. By using this we can view the particular content at middle of the page also.
As many of you have noticed, when you hit a link to switch from page to page in Google+ or facebook, the URL changes, the body changes but some parts of the page don't, like the chatbox. I believe AJAX can change a specific content of the page by requesting a PHP page from the server and get some results, but that won't change the URL.
Actually, I didn't know exactly how to search that in Google, so, any keywords/names/linkes will be strongly appreciated.
I'm using JQuery library for Javascript and Symfony2 framework for PHP, if this helps.
Look at the JQUERY load method.
http://api.jquery.com/load/
All you need to do is use a selector:
$('mydiv').load('newcontent');
Very powerful function. Look it up!
edit:
Sorry missed that url change. The trick alot of times with the URL is around the Hashtag. If you look closely at the URL there will be a "#" pound symbol in there somewhere. This allows the site to store current state without a reload.
Currently there is no way to change the URL in the browser save for the bit after the hashtag with out fully reloading the site.
you can either use iframe or ajax to keep some part of your page static.To change url either you can use hash hack.
window.location.hash = "pageidentifier"
or you can use the html 5 trick described in the url provided by arxanas
As some of you may know, Google is now crawling AJAX. The implementation is by far something elegant, but at least it still applies to Yahoo and Bing AFAIK.
Context: My site is driven by Wordpress & HTML5. An Custom Post Type has tree types of content, and the contents of these are driven by AJAX. The solution I came for not using hashbangs (#!) until fully understand how to implement them is rather "risqué". Every link as HREF linking to *site.com/article-one/?tab=first_tab*, that shows only the contents of the selected tab (<div>Content...</div>). Like this:
This First Tab
As you may note, data-tab is the value that JavaScript sends with AJAX Get, that gets the related content and renders inside a container. At the other side, the server gets the variable and does a <?php get_template_part('tab-first-tab'); ?> to deliver the content.
About the risqué, well, I can see that Google and other search engines will fetch *http://site.com/article-one/?tab=first_tab* instead of http://site.com/article-one/, making users come to that URL instead of showing the home page with the tab content selected automatically.
The problem now is the implementation to avoid that.
Hashbang: From what I learned, I should do this.
HREF should become site.com/article-one/#!first-tab
JS should extract the "first-tab" of the href and pass it out to $_GET (just for the sake of not using "data-tab").
JS should change the URL to site.com/article-one/#!first-tab
JS should detect if the URL has #!first-tab, and show the selected tab instead of the default one.
Now, for the server-side implementation, here is where I'm kind lost in the woods.
How Wordpress will handle site.com/article-one/?_escaped_fragment_=first-tab?
Do I have to change something in .htaccess?
What should have the HTML snapshot? My guess is all the site, but with the requested tab showing, instead of showing only the content.
I think that I can separate what Wordpress will handle when it detects the _escaped_fragment_. If is requested, like by Google, it will show all the content plus the selected content, and if not, it's because AJAX is requesting it and will show only the content. That should be right?
I'm gonna talk third person.
Since this has no responses, I have a good one why you should not do this. Yes, the same reason why Twitter banged them:
http://danwebb.net/2011/5/28/it-is-about-the-hashbangs
Instead of doing hashbangs, you should make normal URIs. For example, an article with summary tab on should be "site.com/article/summary", and if it is the default one that pops out (or is it already requested) it also should change to that URI using pushState().
If the user selects the tab "exercises", the URL should change to "site.com/article/exercises" using pushState() while the site loads the content throught AJAX, and while you still maintain the original href to "site.com/article/exercises". Without JavaScript the user should still see the content - not only the content, the whole page with the tab selected.
For that to work, some editing to the .htaccess to handle the /[tab] in the URL should be done.
Using the following tutorial I want my website to use AJAX to load the content (but also want to be able to use the back button etc. etc):
http://www.queness.com/post/328/a-simple-ajax-driven-website-with-jqueryphp
Ofcourse if someone has javascript disabled the website should also work (without Ajax).
The problem however comes when a javascript enabled user sends a link to a non javascript enabled user. Because javascript is disabled it will not handle the #-tag correctly and will just go to the homepage (so linking directly to pages from a javascript user to non-javascript user is impossible). Is there a way to resolve this issue (preferably php or htacces).
HTML5 gives us methods to alter the URL without refreshing the page https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/Manipulating_the_browser_history#Adding_and_modifying_history_entries
This means you can update something without a page refresh but still give the user a url they can bookmark or send to someone else. These urls will work without JavaScript, as long as you have pages at those locations or are catching them with mod_rewrite or similar.
https://github.com/browserstate/history.js is a great little pollyfill which will use the HTML5 history stuff if the browser supports it, otherwise (Internet Explorer) it changes the hash of the url.
Basically, three steps:
code your "a" tags just normal: <a href='about'>About us</a>
in your javascript code, intercept all click events on <a> tags and navigate to # + this.href. So when they click the above url, you navigate to site.com/#about instead of site.com/about
in your javascript code, have a timer function that reads the hash value form the current location and loads a corresponding url (with # removed) via ajax
Since you code your html just as usual, the site remains fully accessible for non-js users, and, more important, for search engines' bots.
In response to the comments I can suggest the following:
redirect your home page via javascript from just site.com to site.com/js/
when <a href='about'> is clicked, navigate to site.com/js/#about
on the "js" page, have something like <a id=about href="/about">click here</a> for non-js users
Why not just build your application normally and then add the AJAX on top, rather than going the other way round and causing more work for yourself?
Ask yourself, why do you need AJAX page transitions? Does your app actually need them, or is it just because you've seen it on another site, like Twitter?
Here's the situation.
I have a site where clicking hyperlinks within a certain div makes a jQuery function get the content of a div from a separate page. Because of this, the URL don't change. I need it to change as well as writing an entry in history.
My pages are setup like this (not sure this is the smartest way of going though)
access.php (main logon)
new-user.php
forgot-pass.php
index.php
controlpanel.php
etcetc. Now, all of these pages are reachable on their own and are mainly identical and all contain a div called "container". When clicking links, the content from this div gets erased and the content from the coresponding div (container) gets loaded from the file of the URL (href). I'm terrible at explaining..
So basically, what I need is some javascript that picks up the href link address and just pastes it in the url bar at the same time as it creates an entry in history so the back and forth buttons work.
I plan on extending this in a while as well, translating query strings as well. But there are a few constant static pages I need to take care of first. Any help would be very appreciated! :)
You are not allowed to change the entire URL by JavaScript but you can use URL hashes. I recommend you the browser history plug-in. You can simply register a handler to react on URL changes and load your corresponding content via ajax.
Have you looked at the jquery address plugin? Look at the examples. Is this similar to what you want?
It's not possible with "normal urls" (we must wait for a new generation of browsers...)
But there is a "trick": playing with anchors.
A link like "same_page.php#anchor" does not reload the page, but act on both the history and the adress bar.
So, if instead of having url like "page.php?param=lorem", you could have "page.php#param=lorem", you have your solution :)