Change page without refresh a div into the page

Question

Hi i'm looking for a tutorial for understand how i can create a page with a div that isn't refreshed when the page url changes.

Ex. The facebook chat isn't refreshed when i move from an url to another.

Thanks

Answer 1

AJAX is definitely being used, although it may not seem like it because the actual URL is changing. Most AJAX apps just change the hash part of the URL (somesite.com/page/#feature1).

I don't know exactly what Facebook is doing as I haven't studied the app, but I would guess that they are using HTML5 history.pushState() to change the URL so that if you bookmark it or reload, it will go to the same place. I see that @Felix already mentioned this in a comment.

Take a look here for more help:

Is there a way to change the browser's address bar without refreshing the page?

There are lots and lots of resources on using AJAX. I personally use jQuery and find that it makes much of this quite easy. Here's a tutorial that might help:

http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/javascript-ajax/5-ways-to-make-ajax-calls-with-jquery/