Is there any way to request a page without displaying it? - html

If you link to something downloadable with a simple <a href, the user will download the file while staying on the current page. You can get this behavior with files that the browser has no plugin for (like .bin), or by sending a content-disposition header to force downloading.
Is there any method or header which keeps the user on the current page while still requesting the page? The idea is that the user clicks a link, the request is made, but the page doesn't change—like when downloading a file.
This could be done with an iframe I guess, which is not really pretty and makes another request when loading the page. Javascript is another obvious answer, but that's actually the reason for asking this question: compatibility with JS-less clients.
A form with the method set to HEAD is another ugly solution, but doesn't work anyway. Chromium ignores the method and simply performs a GET request...
Anymore ideas?

You could place an iframe on your page that is hidden. Then, give that iframe and id.
Use this id as the target of a link to the file you want to pull down.
I've created a demo at http://jsfiddle.net/dancrumb/N87nL/ to show you how this would work. Just style the iframe as being invisible and you're good to go
The page will load in the iframe, you'll stay on your page, it doesn't require JS. Oh boy!
Note that the iFrame doesn't have an initial value for src, so no request is made on page load.

Related

Facebook, StaticHTML and form summission

This is weird!
I have set up a form using RapidMailer, and on an external site it works fine. (Just to complicate matters, the form is within a <div> as I display a background image, and then use the <div> to position the signup box halfway down the page)
But ...
Put it within an Facebook (Thunderpenny) StaticHTML page, (which I think is <iframe>?) and whilst I can enter name/email, and the submit button shows mouse up/mouse down events, it just won't submit.
I tried adding "pointer-event:auto" to the div so that it was to the fore, but no go. And no good asking the app creator as I doubt I'll get a response. Anyone any ideas? (** I could include page code, but it's 90% links to external js files Rapidmailer sets up)
Is it 'cos I got a <div> within an <iframe>? Do I need to add an <object> to the code somewhere???
It turns out that for some reason, the HTML code cannot find / use the javascripts even with direct URL's. I strongly suspect it's to do with "cross browser" limitations. In otherwords, the StaticHTML <iframe> is on one server, and the HTML code is trying to access javascript on a second server. And as the RapidMailer script is using three scripts direct from jquery.com, it's difficult to know what can be eliminated as they all contain error trapping routines.
In the end, I had to add a direct link to a status update on the Facebook page, and redirect it to the signup form on my blog. I then pinned the post the top. Alas, now for some reason it won't display a graphic with the link, and instead insists on showing the URL itself! Oh well!

Maintaining an iFrame with top.window refresh?

This is natural with a frame but not with an iframe. A top.window refresh with an iframe will reload the iframe as well. So use frame right? Well, no. In their infinite wisdom they deprecated it.
So I lose this functionality if I follow the rules?
I have to bring in an outside site and place it in a frame/iframe and it will process everything inside the frame/iframe. The URL, mysite.com has a frame/iframe with example.com by default. Then as the users navigates the content inside the frame/iframe, going to example.com/about.html, and then decides to reload top.window, I don't want it going back to example.com but to stay on example.com/about.
With the deprecated frame this works. With the "proper" iframe, this doesn't work. What can I do?
You can communicate from the child page to the parent on differnt domains through the hash. You do have to have control of both domains in order to do this but it is definetly an option. What you would have to do is everytime the pages changes you update the hash on the iframe with the current url of the content in the iframe.
http://www.shubho.net/2010/08/cross-domain-communication-between.html

Convert Site with messenger to work like facebook

Hello I'm creating a site at the moment (asp.net mvc) which has a div at the bottom side of the page that works as a messenger.
I would like to find a way to make the site work like facebook's chat. In other words, when a user clicks on a link on the site to load the content on the back however the messenger to stay in tact without loading again.
Will I have to change the site so every page is loaded with an ajax request? Also, I don't want to use iframes.
The only way to have elements to stay on screen from page to page without using iframes to use ajax requests, something like load() if you're uisng jQuery.
Most sites that do it use some variation of hashbangs, so a page can be loaded by directly entering it's url, rather than necessitating a path through other pages.
To do what you propose has fundamental implications to the structure of the entire site, so if this messenger box isn't anything more than a gimmick, I wouldn't bother. I'd even go so far as to say that if you're not sure how you'd do this one thing, you shouldn't be trying to build a site around it.
Well if you dont want your chat to disappear even for a moment with full site refresh, then yes, you have to change your page to ajax loading. It is not such a pain as it looks - for example use jquery to intercept all clicks on anchors, make ajax call to their href, and replace some "all-wrapping" placeholder div with the returned content.. Not very pretty usage of ajax, but it works, and your chat stays in place.

stoping iframe from reloading when I change pages

Is there any way for a iframe nested in a div on my page not to reload when I change pages in the nav? Because when I change pages it will load the code of the page and the iframe on the previous page will be reloaded. Is there any way that I can select it and make that it won't reload when I change pages?
If you reload the entire page, the IFRAME element is getting reloaded with it. Unless you used AJAX or a second IFRAME, there is no way to have the whole page except one element reload.
My initial reaction is: "Why the hell would you want to do that, it sounds awful?"
The only way for this to work is to change the page content dynamically, with the exception of the iframe, rather than loading a new page.
But to answer your question, yes you can do it.
If you have all the page content except the iframe inside a div, lets call it #page and the iframe is at the same level in the DOM, or higher, relative to #page, you could use something like jQuery's load() function to load new content for everything inside the #page div.
However, if SEO or Accessibility matter to you at all, you shouldn't do this.
A users browser will cache a lot fo the content in the iframe anyway, so it shouldn't be too demanding to reload it.
If the contents of the IFRAME are simple enough it might be a simple case of using some light query string parameters to indicate the state the IFRAME is in to persist it across pages.
Your options also depend on any development frameworks you might be using (.NET, Ruby, etc.).
Otherwise, additional IFRAMEs seem to be the only other solution.

How to make links break out of iframe when you only control the iframe page (not the framed pages)?

I have a site that displays other sites through an iframe on certain pages. It does this in order to display a toolbar that is relevant to the reader (like Facebook and Owly does). However, when the user chooses to leave the original site I want the bar to go away. As you might gather, I don't control the sites in the iframe, and they're on another domain than the iframing page.
I tried target="_parent" on the <iframe>, no luck. Then I tried various scripting solutions, but they all fail due to the same domain restriction. My last try was to have a timeout check for changes in the iframe URL, but iframe.contentWindow.location.href is restricted when page is on another domain (unlike the object iframe.contentWindow.location which I found a bit weird).
Any solutions to this problem? I know iframes aren't the hottest thing around, but they do the job in this case.
Try target=_top That should open the page in the full body of the window.
No solutions.
The only way to get a link to open in the top frame is to have access to the link itself. As you observed, the same origin policy prevents JS from outside the frame accessing it.