How is Github Changing Pages and the URL so smoothly without AJAX?

Question

If you go to a project on github, say https://github.com/insoshi/insoshi, and you start clicking into the folders, the folder animates to the sub-directory, and the browser URL changes, but it looks like it's all AJAX. It's only like this in Chrome/Safari from what I've seen.

Is this a webkit transition effect? Or is it just some serious caching/performance-optimization :)?

Answer 1

Github talks about it in their blog.

Answer 2

This is an AJAX based effect. This type of sliding menu (as far as I am aware) was first used for the iPod browsing method. I do recall a lot of CSS/JS falvoured solutions poping up when that was popular.

Then again this method could have originated somewhere else. But yes your solution is AJAX based, you can use FIREBUG in Firefox to see the requests to get directory listings.

The transition effect is a slide effect. There are various examples on the net.