Persisting location attributes in URLs hash

I noticed that new Flash Yahoo! maps interface uses location parameters using URLs hash (text that you can see after # sign).
Apparently it’s quite known way of storing page state when developing AJAX applications and I see several reasons to use it in application like GvsY:

• It can be updated without reloading the page and therefore can be made always up to date
• It removes a need for separate permalink because you can bookmark the page at any moment and always get working link (you can click “del.icio.us” link at any moment to store specific location)
• It helps keep the page in the browsers cache without re-requesting it separately for each location
• Geographical location fits anchor paradigm pretty well since anchor is a “location within a document” and since this document is AJAX page representing the world map, this location can be geographical too

I liked the idea and that’s why I replaced passing parameters through query string with passing them using hash (or anchor if it sounds better). Enjoy!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 19th, 2006 at 12:50 am and is filed under AJAX, Google maps vs. Yahoo! maps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.