CODEWITHSUNDEEP
web-applicationsurlfragment-identifier
nathan
nathan

Reputation: 51

What's the significance of "#" or "#!" that appears in website url's

While browsing some popular websites, I noticed that occasionally the url would change to include these characters "#" or "#!". Why is this? From a programmers perspective, what techniques, technologies are they implementing to cause this. Is this a best practice for a certain solution?

Examples: http://twitter.com/#!/ http://www.facebook.com/#/

Upvotes: 5

Views: 3737

Answers (2)

Ned Batchelder
Ned Batchelder

Reputation: 375604

Here's a thorough explanation of hash-urls and hash-bang urls: HashURIs by Jeni Tennison.

Upvotes: 7

tacone
tacone

Reputation: 11441

It is a in-document link. It's called anchor (or fragment) and it is used to link to certain parts within a page and have the browser directly scroll to the right part of the page.

Try this (and read the contents :-)) http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/links.html#h-12.2.3

This browser mechanism has recently been exploited to perform certain advanced javascript/ajax tricks and it's being used extensively by facebook, twitter, etc. When doing so a general convention is to append a ! after the # to distinguish a javascript-bound anchor from a normal one.

Upvotes: 4

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