All free. All Legal.

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ONJava.com: AJAX: How to Handle Bookmarks and Back Buttons

AJAX: How to Handle Bookmarks and Back Buttons
by Brad Neuberg
10/26/2005

This article presents an open source JavaScript library that finally brings bookmarking and back button support to AJAX applications. By the end of this tutorial, developers will have a solution to an AJAX problem that not even Google Maps or Gmail possesses: robust, usable bookmarking and back and forward behavior that works exactly like the rest of the Web.

“AJAX: How to Handle Bookmarks and Back Buttons” explains the significant issues that AJAX applications currently face with bookmarks and the back button; presents the Really Simple History library, an open source framework that solves these problems; and provides several working examples.

The principal discoveries of the framework presented in this article are twofold. First, a hidden HTML form is used to allow for a large transient session cache of client-side information; this cache is robust against navigation to and away from the page. Second, a combination of hyperlink anchors and hidden iframes is used to intercept and record browser history events, tying into the back and forward buttons. Both techniques are wrapped with a simple JavaScript library to ease development.

See this guy doing a Jack-O-Lantern illuminated by LEDs.

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Alright, so I finally got around to it. I Ajaxified my NowPlaying iTunes playlist. Heres a look at a demo.

First off, if your new to NowPlaying a Windows iTunes plugin, head on over to the site a check it out. Its $10 for a licensed copy, but well worth it. Its a great little plugin that will create an XML file based on what your listening to in iTunes. Get it installed. Any problems getting it to run, refer to Brandons page and the comments there. He provides alot of help. Once you’ve got that installed and running, you can set it up to spit out an XML file via FTP to your server. Provided on Brandon’s page is also a PHP parsing script that I’ve used and modified to create my own little XML File parser. Now in “stand-alone” mode, it works perfect. You’re listening to iTunes, coding your next huge project, and on your site there’s the music you’re listening too. Only problem is, its “static”. Without refreshing the page, the songs stay the same. If people are looking at your site for 15 minutes or more, they’ve missed the last 3 songs you’ve listened too, because lets just be frank, everyone wants to know what your listening too the second you listen to it. So now you want to spice things up a bit. Enter AJAX. Let’s take a look at that the xml file that the NowPlaying Plugin produces.

Jeff::Blog: NowPlaying AJAX’d

Brian Moore has taken their excellent iGuitar line of digitally-equipped guitars, and added class-compliant USB, via the new iGuitar.USB model. Plug it into a USB jack, and you have instant access to your sound in recording and effects software, no drivers required.

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