Getting HTML5 history to work locally

894359 used Ask the Experts™

on 2014-02-28

JavaScript

I have the following HTML5 code I got from this page: http://html5.gingerhost.com/seattle

I downloaded the code and tried to get it working locally but haven't had any success. Here is the error:

SecurityError: The operation is insecure.
file:///C:/Users/miles.willis/Desktop/html5location/HTML5%20History%20API%20_%20cyberstream.us.htm
Line 86

history.pushState(page_to_load, page_to_load, page_to_load )

Is there anyway to get this to work locally? I'm using FF browser.

<br/>

			  <ul id="menu" class="clearfix"> 
                <li class="current"><a href="/">Home</a></li>
                <li><a href="seattle">Seattle</a></li>
                <li><a href="new-york">New York</a></li>
                <li><a href="london">London</a></li>
            </ul>
 
<br/>

<script>
	// THIS IS WHERE THE MAGIC HAPPENS
		$(function() {
			$('nav a').click(function(e) {
				$("#loading").show();
				href = $(this).attr("href");
				
				loadContent(href);
				
				// HISTORY.PUSHSTATE
				history.pushState('', 'New URL: '+href, href);
				e.preventDefault();
				
				
			});
			
			// THIS EVENT MAKES SURE THAT THE BACK/FORWARD BUTTONS WORK AS WELL
			window.onpopstate = function(event) {
				$("#loading").show();
				console.log("pathname: "+location.pathname);
				
			};

		});
	
	</script>

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Dave BaldwinFixer of Problems

Trusted Expert

Most Valuable Expert 2014

Commented: 2014-02-28

From https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/API/DOM/Manipulating_the_browser_history :

The new URL can be any URL in the same origin as the current URL.

You are not working thru a web browser since the error URL starts with file:///C:/Users/miles.willis/Desktop/ . There are many things in modern browsers that will no work thru the 'file://' protocol because there is no 'domain' associated with it. Cookies, local storage, and apparently 'pushstate' are some that have security restrictions applied to them. Some times they won't even work thru 'localhost' because it is not a unique domain.

If you put your code on a web server, it might start working. It at the very least will not have that particular error message.

A complicated document about browser security and restrictions: http://code.google.com/p/browsersec/wiki/Part2

Getting HTML5 history to work locally

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