

I took "abusing the HTML5 History" to the next level. - probablycorey
http://probablyinteractive.com/url-hunter
It's technically not using the HTML5 History, but that post inspired this idea.
======
spiralganglion
Feels like we're back in the days of the Apple ][, only with a much, much
smaller monitor. Things I'd like to see done in the URL bar using the History
API:

    
    
      • Rogue-like text adventure game
      • Hitchhiker's Guide
      • A reading app with page-turning animation
      • Color
    

Whoever cracks that last one, mega kudos. Woz, you around? Feel like doing
some magic?

It's also tempting to ask for a text-editor, but then, we sort of already have
that!

~~~
shimonamit
_Woz, you around?_

That gave me a good laugh! If it is of any interest, in the following video
which was posted a while back on HN, Steve Wozniak tells how he co-founded
Apple with Steve Jobs, and amongst other things, how he hackishly brought
color computing to the Apple 2:

<http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/400/>

(You'll have to forgive me since I don't have time to search exactly where in
the video he talks about adding color.)

~~~
peterwwillis
I think i've heard that speech at four different conferences. Woz needs a new
story.

~~~
oofabz
Have you heard the one about the $2 bills?

~~~
HelloBeautiful
I haven't.

------
mrspeaker
After playing for 10 minutes I thought "this is EXACTLY the kind of insane
time-waster that I would like to read more content from..." So I tried to
remove the # from the title bar as to navigate to your home page.

Turns out that that's harder than the actual game. I won in the end though.

~~~
spicyj
On Safari, Cmd-click the title bar to get a hierarchal listing of the URL
structure.

~~~
barista
I was playing this on IE9. It took me 2 minutes to realize that there was a O
and an a in the url bar somewhere. Damn you half width address bar!

At least it worked when I resized the address bar.

------
taylorbuley
Around the launch of IE9 beta I asked Dean Hachamovitch (IE honcho at MSFT)
what he thought about people typing random things (besides URLs) into the
navigation bar. I'd noticed not entirely tech-savvy people in my life using
the navigation bar as sort of a launch bar for their whole browsing
experience, using it for new searches, history exploration, etc.

Hachamovitch reminded me that this was not really a new thing, as people have
been using the command line since the dawn of time. Never did this really sink
in until I saw this demo: The URL bar is a command line for the people. Behold
its power.

~~~
sp332
Aza Raskin (and about half of Humanized who had come with him) was working on
getting this into Firefox. He worked on some other stuff and then left for
another company, but you can get the idea from here:
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity/Ubiquity_0.1_User_Tut...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity/Ubiquity_0.1_User_Tutorial)
and a very impressive video: <http://vimeo.com/1561578>

The architecture was pretty far along, completely extensible with new verbs
and parsers in JS. They'd got rid of the ugly hyphens from that demo video
with a better parser.
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity/0.2_Design:_UI_and_Se...](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Ubiquity/0.2_Design:_UI_and_Security_Extensibility)
They'd even solved most of the localization problems, like verb-subject-object
or subject-verb-object, and pronouns, and stuff. I really would like to see
this revisited sometime.

~~~
msg
It's still being worked on by the community, there is a build from 2011-01-27.

[https://mozillalabs.com/ubiquity/2010/03/10/community-
mainta...](https://mozillalabs.com/ubiquity/2010/03/10/community-maintained-
version-of-ubiquity-for-firefox-3-6/)

I still use and love this tool every day.

------
pkulak
I look forward to dealing with this on shady sites that want to disable the
back button.

~~~
forgotusername
Yup. It's kinda shocking that there doesn't appear to be some limit on the
number of history entries you can push, in Firefox at least.

~~~
catshirt
chrome as well. i imagine it will be dealt with.

------
ry0ohki
Cool concept, just make sure you open it in a new window or you'll never make
it back to HN!

~~~
paulirish
It's actually not using HTML5 history like the links before. It's just doing
hash manipulation.

It it used history.replaceState it could not only manipulate the URL
completely but also it wouldn't make history events so the back button would
work!

~~~
Sephr
You don't need the HTML5 history API for that either.

    
    
        location.replace("#...");

~~~
Dell
I agree with you guys.

------
slashcom
Took me a while to come back here to comment. :)

Very fun, very creative. Abuse is most definitely the correct word.

------
itsnotvalid
Thanks to your work my browser history in firefox have hundreds - if not
thousands - of lines more just for your site.

~~~
hrabago
Argh, you're right. I should've used private browsing for this. Fortunately on
FF there's a "Clear Recent History" feature.

~~~
itsnotvalid
Alternatively you enter the base url into the search box and Ctrl+A Del (or
Option+A, Del or C+a, del)

------
v21
Wish I'd thought of this. And that I'd made it.

And that it doesn't catch on.

------
amitvjtimub
I like the game.

I also played with browser history to create something more useful
<http://bsearch.heroku.com/> i.e. access other search engines by clicking back
button while on Google.

------
TorKlingberg
So now we can play games in both the address bar and the favicon:
<http://www.p01.org/releases/DEFENDER_of_the_favicon/>

------
itcmcgrath
Well, after viewing my history from going to this page, I think that browsers
are going to have to come up with a way to group history into collapsible
groups. Most likely by a combination of tab and host.

Definitely not looking for to companies using the URL page as the new
scrolling status bar...

------
flexd
Thanks for completely fucking up my browsing history. Kudos.

(Horrible hack though, how is that possible without the browser saying no?)

------
bryze
Ouch, my history! Seriously, this was an experience. I might go as far as
calling it art.

------
thaumaturgy
That's pretty clever. I could see using location.hash for posting scrolling
banner messages in the URL bar, ads ... all kinds of stuff that I'm really not
looking forward to.

------
mekazu
Is it possible in javascript to make a customisable auto-complete for the
address bar? Similar to the way browsers use auto-complete based on your
history, this would use auto-complete based on the site's hierarchy. It's
different to this site because the input events (user controls) are not
triggered when typing in the address bar.

For example, a user wanting to find the elephants page on this web site would
be typing <http://coolstuff.com/things/elep> (and it would suggest) hants by
having hants appear after elep as selected text.

Or is there a good reason why address bar events are not part of the dom?

------
ibejoeb
30 seconds later, my laptop fan is full throttle. I think you win the watts-
per-byte medal.

------
cobbal
Fun bug: press escape tons and watch the animals move faster and your browser
freeze.

------
noonespecial
<Khhaaannn!!!> My back button! MY HISTORY!!!! </Khhaaannn!!!>

------
fady
similar to this via twitter: by @paulrouget

<http://grack.com/blog/>

------
timinman
I killed 4 in 23 seconds. Getting back to this post wasn't easy, though I
can't say I wasn't warned!

------
ddinch
One of the most creative things I've seen in a while. This wrinkles my brain
and the best way.

------
measure2xcut1x
What, no 8-bit sound effects?

------
angus77
"Look up at the url bar!"

I'm using Conkeror, so I had to look down.

------
retroafroman
Very creative. Actually a somewhat addicting game as well!

------
nuxi
Does anyone else think this could be used as a captcha?

------
tfh
This game is even better on firefox with vimperator.

------
hoprocker
Wow, so much for back-nav'ing on _that_ tab.

------
_mayo
It seems to work in IE6 too.

------
philthy
probably interactive is in my history hundreds of times now :)

"Points 4"

------
mikesurowiec
No fun on the iPad :(

------
Sujan
Nice idea.

