really simple (ajax) history support

[eugenepark]

Hi folks,

For those of us trying to build an ajaxified navigation model, it
would be great if we could use something like "really simple
history" (http://code.google.com/p/reallysimplehistory/).

Really simple history encapsulates a bunch of hacks that allow
developers to make the 'back button work' (as well as the forward
button too).

Currently, developers can embed and use these scripts and they'll work
just fine on Firefox, but the script requires that the container host
a "blank.html" file via an iframe in order to work on MSIE. Also, the
scripts require ownership of the document fragment identifier of the
url -- some containers are using this for security tokens.

[Dan Peterson]

Hey Eugene,

I totally support the idea of building ajax apps that actually function properly for users (which includes things like browser history), and you're welcome to use essentially any library or code you'd like to accomplish that -- your users will thank you.

That said, I'm not sure I'd want to require a particular library as per the spec, as that seems overly constraining.

-Dan

[Kevin Brown]

The requirement for a specific file being present on the same domain makes this a candidate for the sort of thing that we would want to standardize on. If a pure JS solution can't be devised, it's definitely worth looking into coming up with a standard feature for this.

The need to own the fragment is pretty important too. That's going to cause problems on many containers, and in the future we'd need something that can perform these sorts of operations while cajoled, too.

--
~Kevin

[Cassie]

Did anybody want to flesh out this proposal any further for 0.8 or is
this in the long term bucket?

- Cassie