jQuery Address

The jQuery Address plugin provides powerful deep linking capabilities and allows the creation of unique virtual addresses that can point to a website section or an application state. It enables a number of important capabilities including:

• Bookmarking in a browser or social website
• Sending links via email or instant messenger
• Finding specific content using the major search engines
• Utilizing browser history and reload buttons

Usage

A basic implementation in pure JavaScript can look like this:

$.address.change(function(event) {  
    // do something depending on the event.value property, e.g.  
    // $('#content').load(event.value + '.xml');  
});  
$('a').click(function() {  
    $.address.value($(this).attr('href'));  
});  

The plugin also provides a jQuery function which can be directly used in the following way:

$('a').address();  

The above snippet can be extended with an additional function that processes the link value:

$('a').address(function() {  
    return $(this).attr('href').replace(/^#/, '');  
});  

By default the plugin automatically adds the appropriate JavaScript event handler to every link that has a rel attribute in the following format:

<a href="/deep-link" rel="address:/deep-link">Deep link</a> 

Changes

09/19/2011 - jQuery Address 1.5

• Introduces feature detection where possible.
• Improves event handling.
• Fixes various issues.

05/04/2011 - jQuery Address 1.4

• Support for jQuery 1.6.
• Drops the internal de/encoding magic.
• Drops the Safari 2 support.
• Fixes various issues.
• Updates the Express sample.

02/04/2011 - jQuery Address 1.3.2

• Support for jQuery 1.5.
• Issue 48: IE7 "Permission Denied" error.
• Issue 47: Issues for non-Latin urls and State update to change title on click event.
• Issue 40: Encoding problem in parameter().
• Issue 38: Issue when form actions containing query variables.
• Issue 37: Using live events for form submissions.

11/29/2010 - jQuery Address 1.3.1

• Issue 26: Values should no longer be only strings.
• Issue 20: Improves the encoding of special characters.
• Fixed issue with state value detection.
• Fixed issue with the global ajaxComplete event.

09/26/2010 - jQuery Address 1.3

• Support for the HTML5 onpopstate/pushState/replaceState API.
• Support for tracker function reference.
• Support for document.domain in IE6/7.
• Improved value encoding scheme.
• New State and Express samples.
• Improved jQuery UI Tabs sample.
• Improved event cancellation.
• GA tracker function lookup is performed only against the top window.
• Fixes an issue with manual address changes in IE7.
• Removes IE specific code applicable only for local testing.

07/19/2010 - jQuery Address 1.2.2

• Issue 12: Fixes the opening of tab links in a new browser tab.
• Issue 11: Fixes the rel attr handling for Ajax loaded links.
• Issue 10: Cannot turn off Google Analytics page tracking.
• Fixed lazy loading support.
• Fixed form submission support in IE.
• Fixed issue with the href attribute in older versions of IE.
• Tabs sample improvements.

05/18/2010 - jQuery Address 1.2.1

• Issue 6: Using links without a href attribute causes an error.
• Issue 5: Setting parameter = 0 removes it from address.

05/05/2010 - jQuery Address 1.2

• New queryString, parameter and path setters.
• New autoUpdate, crawling and wrap options.
• New generic bind method.
• New Accordion, Crawling and Form samples.
• Support for hash fragments as a part of the value.
• Basic support for forms.
• Improved onhashchange support.
• Switched samples to HTML5.
• Switched to the Closure compiler.
• JSLint compatibility.
• Simple test suite.
• Support for jQuery 1.4.2 and jQuery UI 1.8.

12/23/2009 - jQuery Address 1.1

• New internalChange and externalChange events.
• New Events sample.
• Improved IE support.
• Frameset support.

04/28/2009 - jQuery Address 1.0

Initial release.