[GIVEN UP / RESOLVED] Reload when '#text' part changes

[bushmobile]

title says it all really - how would i go about reloading the page when the text following the # changes. e.g.

http://www.bushmobile.com/info.html#about

user changes it (via a link or by hand) to:

http://www.bushmobile.com/info.html#stuff

and i would like the page to reload.

[penagate]

You can't. Any text after the hash sign should not be sent by the browser, and if it is, is ignored by the server.

[bushmobile]

bugger.

ok, in that case is it possible force a browser to refresh when i click on a link.

e.g. I've got:

<a href="http://www.bushmobile.com/info.html">Info</a>

and i want it to reload the page even if http://www.bushmobile.com/info.html is already showing.

[penagate]

Might have misunderstood your question slightly. If I get you, you will need to use Javascript to manually reload the page. I am not sure however if there is an event that fires if the bookmark part of the URL changes. I don't think there is.

[penagate]

bugger.

ok, in that case is it possible force a browser to refresh when i click on a link.

e.g. I've got:

<a href="http://www.bushmobile.com/info.html">Info</a>

and i want it to reload the page even if http://www.bushmobile.com/info.html is already showing.

It should do that anyway.

If not, you could try putting a randomised query string after it.

http://www.bushmobile.com/info.html?abcdef123456

[bushmobile]

hmmm, that's true, it should.

what i'm actually trying to do is get the page to reload when the user clicks:
http://www.bushmobile.com/info.html#about
and then clicks:
http://www.bushmobile.com/info.html#stuff

i guess the browser doesn't bother reloading if it sees that just the bookmark has changed, so is there anyway i could force it to?

Edit: I'd love to use a query string but this god damn template thing won't let me - i'm trying to fudge it as it lets the bookmarks through.

[penagate]

Yes, put different meaningless query strings into the target URLs.

http://www.bushmobile.com/info.html?1#about
http://www.bushmobile.com/info.html?2#stuff

[penagate]

Eh, well, that's the only way I can think of.

Other way is to switch to a different template system

[bushmobile]

it's just me trying to be conservative with the templates - i guess i'll just have to use one for everypage... oh well

[penagate]

How is the page going to be any different if all you change is the bit that doesn't get sent to the server?

[bushmobile]

i was parsing it in the onLoad event (don't hate me)

[penagate]

Hate is a subjective term.

Nevertheless, if you're using JS, might as well not reload the page at all.

Buuut, you still need proper separate pages, as well as one all-in-one JS thingo. Otherwise you exclude people who can't run Javascript.

[bushmobile]

Nevertheless, if you're using JS, might as well not reload the page at all.

at the moment my text is in span tags which are all set to display:none and based on the value after the # i was showing the relevant one using JS. Bearing in mind that all i have control over is the html on the page i couldn't think of another way - how will i know which one i should show?

Buuut, you still need proper separate pages, as well as one all-in-one JS thingo. Otherwise you exclude people who can't run Javascript.

what do you mean by all-in-one thingo?

[penagate]

All in one being the approach you are using now.

What you could do, and this is starting to get ugly, is add event listeners to each anchor element with a #reference, when the page loads, and then in that event handler, show and hide the appropriate content elements.

[bushmobile]

meh, i think i'm gonna give up - just gonna use the Anchor tags as they were meant to be used - cheers for the input, pen.