The thing that I want to know is how to create a frame around the site that stays constant and at the same time and change the url in the address bar depending on the actual page being shown. It needs to be able to have an audio element that plays nonstop even if you go to another page on the server.
Pitchfork Website, the player can be seen in the upper righthand corner.
Swapping out content and then updating the URL sounds like a pattern that Mark Pilgrim goes over in http://diveintohtml5.info/history.html
With a little AJAX you can update your content, history.pushState() allows you to change the URL, and then add an event listener to listen to the popstate event (when the user navigates backwards).
This doesn't really give much guidance as to how you should structure your page or AJAX calls but hopefully it gives you an idea of the general concept.
If I understand you, you can include your resource as a template to your site (include it in every page, while taking into account the width and length of your main frame and the resource's size).
Related
Question: With Javascript, can you tell the web browser to begin loading a page, but don't begin rendering it yet?
Issue: A client wants his web page to show listings like a book. When you click on the next button, he doesn't want the next page to immediately load. He wants the book to close (a closing animation) and then load the next page.
Current status: All links go to Javascript. I show the closing animation. Then, I replace the window location. The issue is that there is a clear wait for the next page to load. It would be nice if I could load the following page into cache while the closing animation runs. In other words, I want to make that three-second animation useful time by loading all the HTML, CSS, Javascript, and images for the following page and then all that happens when I set the new location is that it renders.
Possible solution: I have the main page that had two full-screen iframes in it. One iframe is the current page. The other is hidden and is used to load the next page. After the animation, I flip which iframs is visible and which isn't. This is good except that the back button doesn't work properly. If you click back, you go to wherever you were before you went to the website. You don't hide the current iframe and show the one you just hid. If you click back twice, flipping iframes doesn't work. I have to keep a log of your history. Further, I have to hack the back button, which I don't like. So, I'd like to use a built-in cache method if I can.
Possible solution: I have the main page that had two full-screen iframes in it. One iframe is the current page. The other is hidden and
is used to load the next page. After the animation, I flip which iframes is visible and which isn't.
Yes, this sounds like a good approach.
This is good except that the back button doesn't work properly. [...]
I have to hack the back button, which I don't like.
Single Page Applications (SPAs) can't use the back button as originally intended because the entire application exists within a single document.
Partly in response to this, we have
history.pushState()
which is a really good extension to the History API, enabling new "artificial" entries (describing new states) to be added to the browser's history, which, in turn, enables the back button to work exactly as the user might expect it to.
Further Reading:
http://html5doctor.com/history-api/
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/History/pushState
Is this even possible? To have an mp3 play where it left off when you navigate to a different page on the same website? I seriously don't even know where to begin. Kind of new to HTML, CSS, etc.
Any Ideas? Thanks.
Not across multiple page loads. But you can have a single page which plays audio and provides navigation therein for the user. A couple overarching structural options would include:
Create a Single Page Application (SPA). Here your one "page" would play the audio, and the site navigation would happen within this single page instance with JavaScript/AJAX. The browser would only ever load one "page", but the overall application would dynamically load/unload as elements of that page as you see fit.
(A very old method, but still works) Create a parent page with frames for navigation. The parent (frame) page would contain the audio, and the rest of the navigation through the application would be done in frames within that page.
I'd recommend the first approach, but either would work.
If you reload the entire page (and therefore the audio source), there is no way to provide a seamless playback. There will always be a very noticeable gap due to page load times, even if you try to keep track of the position within the audio track. Slow internet connections will make it worse.
Instead, you can embrace one of those four options:
Single Page App:
As also pointed out by David, my suggestion would be to create a single page application, i.e. a page that loads once, then loads/replaces all additional content dynamically. One the user clicks a navigation link, instead of loading a new page (or reloading the current page), you just replace the main content, using AJAX. The part that provides the audio stays in place.
Additional tab/popup/window
You could create an additional tab, popup window or window just for the sake of playing the audio. One example of this is the German radio station "radioeins". At the time of writing, their website provides an orange button in the top right that will open a popup window for their live stream, allowing the user to continue browsing their website with the music continuing to play uninterruptedly from the popup. I would only go down this route if the single page app is not an option, as popups or additional tabs are bad UX and popups might be blocked by browsers.
iframe
You could provide the main content of your page within an iframe, or the other way round, provide the audio from within an iframe. I would recommend against this, as there are several disadvantages to this approach.
Frames
Frames would provide a similar approach to iframes, but they are deprecated, so I strongly recommend against this one as well.
tl;dr
Make it a single page application if you can, otherwise resort to a popup-solution.
How do IHeartRadio and 8Tracks keep the music playing without pause even when you go to a different url without any Pause?
My initial thought was that they would use something like Ajax to load content - but the fact that the browser favicon reloads makes me think it may be something else.
There are questions like this one that ask how is it possible to do so at all - but my question is how do established sites like IHeartRadio.com and 8Tracks.com do this?
If this question is not within StackOverflows scope, please let me know and I will remove it.
They are using ajax obviously.
8Tracks
Screen shot shows a browser loading 8Tracks's About us page. See initiator column (red mark) which is a javascript/xhr which means ajax.
To trigger the default browser is loading event: See:
How to have AJAX trigger the browser's loading indicator
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.
I have been trying to solve this problem for a while now and have looked on numerous forums to find a solution. Here is my setup. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
I currently have a index page that loads a JavaScript header and footer above and below my "content" section. I also have a list of navigation links inside of the header. My music player is located in the footer. It does not load automatically (for those that are bothered by that), and i don't want it to reload every time someone clicks on one of the navigation links on the side. I don't want to use frames for this; I have read that frames will allow me to only refresh the "content" section of my page, but that when indexing a site, most search engines will not work well with a site that has frames. I also do not want to use a pop-up for my music as most browsers and users have pop-ups blocked.
Basically i am looking for a code or something that will allow for a header and footer (doesn't have to be a JS header and footer) to not refresh when someone clicks on the navigation links located in my header. Thanks again to anyone that has a solution to this problem.
Do it like Facebook - use JavaScript to intercept link navigation, load the content using XMLHttpResponse, and then update the portions of the page that need to change.
This keeps the static integrity of the page for search engines, allows most of the site to still work just fine for users with scripting disabled, and avoids resetting the music for everyone else.
What Shog9 said, but also make sure to change location.hash whenever you change the content and make it so that visiting the website with that hash will redirect you to the correct page.
Here's another example of a band that uses the AJAX method to reload the page content, while keeping the player going...
http://jonandroy.ca/
The URL hashtag gets updates each time you click on something, and if you copy that URL, when you visit it, you'll see the homepage load for a split second, and then it loads the content of the page specified by the hashtag. Not perfect, but an overall good solution to this age-old problem.
You might want to look at how thesixtyone.com works. They have non-interrupted music by using AJAX to rebuild the page when a link is clicked rather than load a new one. This is achieved by having all links be anchors for the current page (i.e. all links are relative and start with a hash character).