Twitter has the following UI behaviour that I want to replicate:
a homepage https://twitter.com with an endless feed you can scroll down;
if you click on a tweet it opens up with a dedicated URL (e.g. https://twitter.com/TheTweetOfGod/status/635493904834412545);
this tweet appears to be an embedded page/section 'on top' of the original feed, which you can still see around the edges but shaded darker;
If you click off the embedded tweet element (i.e. on the shaded area) you revert to the original https://twitter.com feed at the same point (i.e. page has not refreshed).
Note that if the tweet URL is opened up in a fresh tab then the author's profile page forms the shaded backdrop instead of the main feed page. So the main feed backdrop is only inherited if the tweet page has been accessed from https://twitter.com.
In web design terms does this design approach have a formal name/definition that might help me identify a suitable solution? I'm assuming it has a server-side dimension.
There are three aspects to your question. Let's first dive into the technology needed to implement everything, and then briefly discuss how Twitter leverages that technology.
TL;DR? Twitter uses the history API combined with AJAX and DOM manipulation to work its magic.
The techniques, and a little bit of background
(a) Changing the URL without refreshing the page (2 and 4 on your list)
There is an API for that, implemented by modern browsers.
window.history.pushState(state, title, URL);
window.history.replaceState(state, title, URL);
window.addEventListener('popstate', (event) => { /* use event.state */ });
The first two functions allow you to simulate the user navigating to URL. The first adds an entry to the navigation history, while the second replaces the current entry. This impacts what will happen when users use the back and forward buttons in their browser.
When users navigate back, or you simulate this using history.back(), the popstate event is fired and the state that you passed into pushState can be accessed via event.sate. The state can be any object, so this is useful to store, say, the title of the page (to update the document.title), the scroll position, or whatever else you want.
(b) Loading content directly
Because the entry is saved in the browsing history, it is possible that users visit this URL directly after having closed the tab or even their browser. They may also share the URL and have others visit it directly. In those cases, there will be no popstate event, but simply a request to your web server for the URL you passed to pushState. The URL must hence be meaningful to the server.
Twitter apparently loads the poster profile as a backdrop in this case. It depends on your use case what you want the page to look like. Anything goes!
(c) Loading content asynchronously (3 on your list)
Back to (a) for a bit. Twitter not only changes the URL, but also loads the tweet, meta data of that tweet and replies to it. This is then displayed in a modal popup.
Again, there is an API1 to load content asynchronously: AJAX. In particular, the XMLHttpRequest object and its functions are of interest. This can be used to make requests to the server and fetch content without needing the page to reload completely.
It is worth mentioning that a new API is being developed: the Fetch API. At the time of writing, there is basic support in all modern major browsers, but it is still somewhat under development.
After having fetched the content, it can be displayed on the page in any which way you like. JavaScript can be used to create, delete and modify elements in the DOM at will.
An example from your question: Twitter
Now that all techniques are on the table, let's summarize what Twitter does.
When a user clicks a tweet in their feed.
Load tweet meta data and replies (as described under (c)).
Create a backdrop and modal and populate them with the loaded content.
This uses standard techniques: create, delete and modify page elements.
Update the URL (as described under (a)) to enable easy sharing, amongst others.
When a user dismisses the modal.
Delete the modal and backdrop.
Update the URL (as described under (a)).
When a user directly visits the URL to a specific tweet.
Let the server respond with the profile page of the tweet author, with the tweet details loaded in a modal on top of it. Thus, no JavaScript is required at all. Of course, the modal can be dismissed just like in the previously described use case.
Implementing this on your own web site
You correctly identified that there are both client side and server side dimensions to this technique. The beauty of it is that, when implemented correctly, it is completely transparent to users. The only thing they will (not) notice is that there are fewer full page loads.
The references sprinkled throughout this answer should provide good starting points for you!
Final notes
All of this is sometimes also used to create smooth transitions between pages of the same site. In those cases, full pages are loaded asynchronously (as per (c)) and then a smooth transition, usually involving animations, is performed. There are many, many, many, many examples, tutorials and libraries for this. You may want to search for PJAX to learn and find more.
__________
1Not really a single API maybe, but an approach or mindset. See the MDN reference for more details.
I think that what is happening in Twitter is that the popup tweet loads the same content as the tweet in its own unique page; not that the modal has an unique URL.
If you use Angular, you can inject the same content into html modal templates or into standalone pages using route provider, and you could link from the modal content to the standalone page using the ID of the specific data to load that content.
EDITED TO ADD:
Here is the source code of a tweet in a stream of tweets, before it pops up as a modal:
<div class="js-tweet-text-container">
<p class="TweetTextSize TweetTextSize--normal js-tweet-text tweet-text" lang="en" data-aria-label-part="0">
Does anyone remember a 1990s TV show about a folklore prof investigating urban legends, shown on weird night on channel 4 <s>#</s><b>folklorethursday</b></p>
</div>
Here is the URL of the tweet when it is shown as a modal in front of the twitter feed: https://twitter.com/vogelbeere/status/887996116549107713
There are so many event listeners on the tag that it's hard to see which one is the link to the tweet.
Related
I'm worrying that I won't get any reply from stack overflow, because I couldn't get any reply from previous question. You don't need to fully read previous question, but It could be helpful to understand my question.
Our company is on service that html document builder(windows application) and I'm a desktop s/w engineer. after build html document with our windows app, we export all things to html/js/css.
Consumer of our application is a designer who creates or edits contents via our windows app. and the end-user of contents which is created by designer see contents via browser(chrome, safari (iphone), samsung browser).
The Problem is, my superior (programmer) wants use java-script as a navigation, this is possible. but, he want to save all state of document state before navigation, so after navigation to any page and then comeback to origin page, all state - animation (contents may have animation) and all script state - should be same exactly before he leaving origin page.
More specifically, main html has a iframe, and iframe can shows all contents. Main.html have a navigation button so iframe can navigate all contents created by designer. If user interacted with page1.html inside iframe, then make iframe to change its content to page2.html by clicking navigation button (go to second page button implemented inside main.html but outside of iframe). and then back to page1.html, he get exactly same state as before he leaving page1.html.
At a glance, It seems quite possible just implement go-forward or go-backward, but dynamically paging navigation is impossible to me. I found some techniques - access browser visit history and window.history object, but It seems there isn't user-defined way.
I thought Electron app(desktop) will be fine for our solution, but my superior says It should be works well with just html/js/css. Our final product should be shown in desktop, iPad, mobile or any device that handle web browser.
I need technical advice to accomplish this issue, I'm fine there is no way to control navigation while saving document state. Help me please.
Document state can be saved by using localstorage object in javascript.
I was browsing this website https://amaioswim.com/
and I did notice that when clicking on the navigation on the left side, the url address change instantly.
They also use a "fade out" and "Fade in" curtain to make the transition between pages seamless.
I'm wondering what kind of approach would you use to achieve this.
I know with JS you can change url, but only hashtags url... right?
or is it because they have a super fast server with 0 latency?
do you think they are loading everything ajax-ly in a same dvi container?
Thanks
This has little to do with the history API. (They are using that API to update the displayed URL, but that's a minor detail in how the site works; on its own it wouldn't create this behavior.)
This particular site is running a clientside framework. (I'm not seeing any obvious clues in the minified code as to which one.)
Links within the site are handled as AJAX requests. They're using the same endpoints for fresh page loads and for XHR calls, and are checking the X-Requested-With header to determine whether to send the full server-rendered HTML file (including the framework for the full site) or just the content for that particular page (which will be embedded clientside in the already loaded site.)
As evidence: this returns the full site (as when a user first visits that URL):
curl 'https://amaioswim.com/about'
This returns just the "about" content (as when a user clicks the "about" link after loading the site):
curl 'https://amaioswim.com/about' -H 'X-Requested-With: XMLHttpRequest'
(You can also see this by viewing the Network panel in the browser console while navigating the site.)
Loading just the content for an individual page is, of course, much faster than loading the entire page HTML (and its CSS and JS), and allows you to add glossy effects like crossfades and animations while the AJAX call is in progress.
Since some years you can use the html5 history api:
https://css-tricks.com/using-the-html5-history-api/
It will allow you to manipulate the url quite freely.
For example when you scroll to a new section you can put that section at the end of the browser url.
That's history API in action. Find more details here
Try the pushState and replaceState methods, that should get you this behavior. To have more precise control over these, you might also want to take a look at popState event
I am newer to JavaScript and I am working on a website where I want to be able to switch the URL when I click on certain elements of the site without reloading the page.
I want it to work like http://www.itemcycle.com when you click on the link to sell your iPad or iPhone and then select your model. It shows different boxes, and when you click on them, it changes the URL but I know it's not loading a new page because it doesn't scroll me back to the top.
Thanks in advance for your help!
what you are seeing is a single page application
A single-page application (SPA), also known as single-page interface
(SPI), is a web application or web site that fits on a single web page
with the goal of providing a more fluid user experience akin to a
desktop application.
It will be achieved by using certain JS frameworks. AngularJS is the popular one.
Try this:
window.location.href="/yourUrl";
HTML5 introduced the history.pushState() which allows you to add and modify history entries.
window.history.pushState('page1', 'Title', '/page1.php');
This might worth looking.
There's 2 main ways to redirect a user, each with it's tradeoffs:
You can redirect a user to a new page by changing the value of window.location.href. So for instance window.location.href='https://example.com'; will redirect a user to https://example.com. Note this will do a hard page reload, so the page will actually reload.
To change the url path without redirecting the user to a new page you can do use history.pushState. Doing something like:
history.pushState({}, "page 2", "/page2");
will change the url from https://example.com to https://example.com/page2 and the scroll position won't change. You can then listen to changes from history.pushState and update the page accordingly giving you effect you're looking for. Note you cannot change the domain (i.e. you can't go from https://example1.com to https://example2.com), but on the plus side the page will not actually be reloaded.
As others have pointed out there are various frameworks which allow you to do this type of thing, but those frameworks are making use of the techniques I've described above.
A website contains a "random" link, which loads a url that returns a 307 redirecting to the url we want. It works fine: click it and you load a random page. The problem is that each time you click it, the browser assumes you're loading the same page: so if you're on the homepage, then you follow the random link 5 times, then you press back, you'll be taken all the way back to the homepage, with no way to find the random pages you were just looking at. I want to modify this behavior so that users can access previous random pages via the back and forward buttons.
I don't own the website, so I can't just change the redirect code.
Here's what I've tried, all of which has failed.
Predicting what would be redirected to. While somewhat possible, there would be no way to avoid failure in up to .1% of clicks, and it would react very poorly to unexpected events, like a page that's published a day late, let alone a sit structure change.
Loading the 307 page via ajax. The request stops at readystate == 2 and I can't access the location header.
Cancel the click event and instead set location.href = random_link.href. This has no effect - the new page still doesn't go into history.
Have the new page call history.pushState. This successfully adds the page to history, but I can't find a way to distinguish between new pages and ones being opened via the back button, so the history quickly becomes very corrupted.
Keeping my own history in localStorage. As above, I can't tell when the back button is being used.
I'm working on a solution that I'm pretty sure will work, involving loading the page in an iframe over the existing page and using a background process and messaging to work around the fact that content injections from chrome extensions can't access window.parent from within iframes. And using the history API to reflect the current iframe's URL in the address bar, and get the back and forwards buttons to apply to the current iframe where appropriate.
While I'm pretty sure the last solution can be made to work, it's a hideously complex and heavyweight approach to what seems like a simple problem. So I thought I'd ask you guys before I continue: any other ideas?
Have you tried storing the locations in localStorage, then hi-jacking the back button ?
I am sure you know how localStorage works, for hi-jacking the back button you can refer to this : Is there a way to catch the back button event in javascript?
T.
Most of the WebSocket examples out there are centered around a single web page, where the content updates with chat, financial or some other live metrics - makes sense for a single page.
However, given a news feed scroller, where that feed needs to exist on every page of the site, I would like to open the conversation up to some possibilities for this.
Currently the site is a classic ASP site, but will be eventually migrated to MVC/MVP.
Since we don't want to open/close the web socket every time a link is clicked on (currently loads a new page), I was thinking about an IFrame type of UI, which can be done with updatable DIV's and jQuery.
Given a simple containerized UI template with a header (c1) and footer (c2), content in the center (c3) with left (c4) and right (c5) bars, when clicking on a link on the header, where the main menu would reside, instead of updating the entire page, I could load a page into one of the containers (updatable div), preserving the WebSocket container's connection - avoiding needing to re-establish the connection.
What are some other options to consider to accomplish this?
Thanks.
UPDATE
If you take a look at FB's implementation, their status bar on the right and even chat, stay on the page across link clicks. How is that accomplished?
Using IFrames or otherwise modifying your page state (rather than full page loads) is probably the best direction right now but shared Workers may also do what you want. The idea is to allow multiple pages loaded simultaneously from the same origin to share a web worker. I suspect that the shared worker will persist even for page navigation within the same site. However, I have not actually tried it and the W3C spec is not clear to me on this issue. I would be interested to know if this is in fact true.
Note that Shared Workers are in Chrome, Safari and Opera but IE and Firefox have not committed to supporting shared workers yet:
http://dev.w3.org/html5/workers/#shared-workers-introduction
http://caniuse.com/#feat=sharedworkers