[whatwg] setting location.hash property and browser reload

[Ian Hickson]

On Wed, 8 Jul 2009, Peter Michaux wrote:
>
> When setting the location.hash property, some older browsers reloaded 
> the entire page. The newest versions of the major browsers doe not 
> reload the page when setting location.hash. This seems to be now de 
> facto standard behavior. Sites like Yahoo Maps! depends on the page not 
> reloading when setting location.hash for a good user experience.
> 
> I'm not aware of any standard guaranteeing there is no page reload when 
> setting location.hash. Will HTML5 make such a guarantee? I cannot find 
> anything in the spec.

HTML5 requires that there not be a reload. Setting location.hash 
eventually (if you follow the admittedly convoluted definitions) is 
equivalent to running the navigation algorithm:

   http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#navigate

...which, in step 4, just scrolls and aborts the algorithm without 
actually changing the active Document object.

HTH,
-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'