It’s Like Frames All Over Again

02Dec08

Hello Blog! Long time no writey.

Well!

Ajax. A wonderful thing. But. Here’s what it is: when I refresh a page, I want it to be the same thing again, except if it’s been updated on the server side. Idempotent, or whatever the kids are calling it now. But what with all this Ajax stuff (which again, great, in its place), I’m finding more and more sites (and especially those that like to call themselves ‘web apps’) which alter content within the viewed page and then don’t hold those alterations through a refresh. See the BBC’s iPlayer site. It has various panels, one of which is the most important, headed ‘Today’ and ‘Yesterday’. It defaults to Yesterday, and I need to click on Today to see the programme I’m waiting to appear. If I refresh it, it goes back to the default of Yesterday, and I need to press the Today button again. But I refreshed Today, and I want to see the Today resource.

Ring any bells? Not really searchable; doesn’t survive a refresh; somewhat tricksy and user-unfriendly?

It’s Like Frames All Over Again.

Now, it’s all in transition right now, HTML and such, but: breaking the back button = Frames All Over Again. Breaking the refresh button, FAOA. Breaking the ctrl/command-click to open the resource in a new tab — FAOA.

We fixed this, ages back. Stop unfixing.

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Tags: html, web