5 replies to this topic

[cw3le]

Hello!

If you used Firefox odler than version 4 for browsing Facebook, you could see that Firefox had certain problems "formating" adresses of pages that you opened.

For example, if you just opened Facebook, your adress bar would contain something like this: "facebook.com/". Let's say that you wish to open a page of a certain group called "Group". When you open that page, your adress bar would have this adress: "facebook.com/?#!/Group" instead of just "facebook.com/Group". Also, if you wish to navigate to main page, while still visiting page of mentioned group, your adress bar would contain this address: "facebook.com/?#!/".

Now, this would all be ok if it didn't caused a lot of troubles with displaying new information on pages that you visit. For example, you wrote a new status and it displays fine. Now, you open page of afore-mentioned group and later navigate back to main page. Chances are that you will not see your recently-written status (although it is there) and some other recent news. But if you delete that "?#!/" from the address in address bar and hit enter, you'll get page with all recent news displayed corectly.

Another thing is that, as I've noticed, only Firefox had this type of "formating" Facebook's URL's. Thankfully, this new version 4 have that fixed and browsing Facebook now is as it should be, but I keep wondering what that group of symbols mean?

The reason I've opened this thread here is because Facebook is made using php, that's no secret, and because the "?" symbol is used to pass arguments to php documents, like "index.php?id=5", so I tought this has something to do with that.

I've tried searching on google, but got no results! Any info from you guys here?

[Megak]

The #! is an anchor, probably recognized as facebook to update itself and return to home. Anchors were traditionally used to skim a long web page down to the part you need without scrolling or reloading the page. The ? is generally referred to as "search string" but it's used to hold GET data and other assorted data that the programmer may want to include.
Personally, I don't like how facebook does this, because it basically leaves a little trail in the address and it irritates me that this could be done a lot more simpler

[cw3le]

Anchor... So it would seem as the Facebook is one giant web page and when you visit certain parts of it, by using those anchors you get a quick-scroll to that part of Facebook. :D
Still don't get it, though. But thanks on such a quick reply! ;)

[Megak]

cw3le said:

Anchor... So it would seem as the Facebook is one giant web page and when you visit certain parts of it, by using those anchors you get a quick-scroll to that part of Facebook. :D
Still don't get it, though. But thanks on such a quick reply! ;)

it was traditionally used to scroll, but it can be used in a different way using javascript to basically reload portions of the page without reloading the entire page. It's similar to using javascript:void(0) (some claim they're interchangeable; but that's not really relevant). Facebook isn't really one giant webpage, but many aspects of it connect together

No prob ;)

[Megak]

An anchor used to mean a giant webpage scroll system. But now it can be used to trigger events without the entire page refreshing. For example, toggling facebook chat is done by an anchor; the box opens, but the page in the background doesn't change at all. So, as a coder, you can just stick an anchor in to a page and have different functions in the same place. It's very helpful with creating menus etc

[Alexander]

It should be similar to index.php#anchor!customactionspecifier

The "?" to shorten index.php, and the ! for use of their custom scripting. They can be defined to do anything, and facebook is known to experiment with the web, it likely kept using that method for specific browsers (Firefox 4 did not fix it, it just is not targeted by that.)