dynamic updating of a web page

Question

I need to change a part of my web page content dynamically without refreshing the entire page. Like Myspace or Facebook users gallery.

Does anybody know of any useful scripts with a working back button and changing address URL accordingly?

Answer 1

If it is a simple update I'd user jQuery to periodially poll something in the background and update the page accordingly.

http://docs.jquery.com/Ajax

setTimeout(poll, 10000); // every 10 seconds

function poll(){
 $.get('my_url_returns_a_chunk_of_html', myCallback);
}
function myCallback(data, textStatus){
  $('#somediv').html(data); // just replace a chunk of text with the new text
  setTimeout(poll, 10000);
}

This could be a lot better and handle when the text hasn't changed and error handling etc but is a start.

If you need it to be instant your looking at Comet but in general it adds a lot of complexity so I'd stay away out of simplicity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_%28programming%29