Developing Ajax Applications That Preserve Standard Browser Functionality

Filed in archive AJAX on February 1, 2006

Dev2Dev has a good article about a subject I keep hearing about with Ajax. The potential of AJAX enabled web sites to break some very common functionality that Internet users has become accustom to using with the typical browser. This article attempts to explain and then provide some potential solutions to problems.


AbstractAjax applications are praised for their richness, interactivity, and responsiveness, which are achieved by loading data dynamically using the XMLHttpRequest object instead of loading new pages. Among the hype and excitement, a few critical voices have pointed out that Ajax applications break several important browser features, including support for the back/forward button.

This article begins with an explanation of why the back/forward button and other browser functionality will not work unless explicitly built into an Ajax application. The article will then outline how developers can address these issues. Finally, we will look in detail at how the Backbase Ajax engine provides support for the back/forward button and other standard browser functionality.
Check it out here.