Ajax Back, Forward, Reload and PHP

IdaAshley writes "A major challenge of Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax)-driven Web sites is the lack of a Back button. Mike Brittain discusses ways to get around this obstacle in part 1 of the 'Developing PHP the Ajax way' series." From the article: "The Web is a page-by-page medium. The backward and forward buttons on your browser's toolbar direct the browser from page to page. When Macromedia's Flash became all of the rage, developers and users started to see how Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) break this metaphor. You might click around a few sites, land on a Flash-based Web site, then click around in it for a few minutes. One click of the Back button and the ride is over. Rather than going one step backward within the Flash site, you completely lose your place."

How about:

[llamalicious]

How about doing something that actually uses the built-in back and forward buttons of the browser (when possible)?

Like something similar to this? [contentwithstyle.co.uk]

Re:To put it simply

[RingDev]

My thought would be to set the index page up to read that history stack cookie and redirect the browser to a live page. That way, if the user hit's the back button, they get kicked back to the index page. The index page slices the top item off the stack and redirects the user to the live page with the top item on the history stack as the target.

Not a FF plug in, but it would be a seamless solution to the back button issue for a website.

-Rick

Doesn't use the browser's back/forward

[tedhiltonhead]

This doesn't talk about using the browser's native back/forward buttons, as I inferred from the summary. It just creates fake back/forward buttons within the application, and maintains a history stack. Move along, nothing to see here...

WebCT Vista vs Yahoo Mail

[apathy maybe]

I 'use' (am abused by) WebCT Vista for my university studies. And it is crap.

When using a web browser you would expect that the standard functions to work, back and forward buttons, multiple tabs on a site and so on. But WebCT Vista doesn't let you do that! Oh no, it restricts you to one page and the navigation is terrible.

People already know how to use webpages, they do not need a new concept thrust at them, especially not a new concept that breaks the old.

I think that Yahoo mail works really well, it is an example of an online app that works with in the web browser concept and offers interaction beyond that for those who want to learn.