
Show HN: Space Invaders in the URL - arnaudsm
https://arnaud.at/emoji
======
adtac
WARNING: this completely obliterates your browser history. Open this only in a
private browsing widow.

~~~
mrzool
Flagged. This doesn’t belong on the front page.

~~~
arnaudsm
I am sorry about that, it was just a funny experiment.

I thought it was acceptable considering that you accepted a similar post 6
months ago, which stayed on the frontpage for a long time :
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19679890](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19679890)

~~~
_ph_
I really like your experiment - but you should put it behind the landing page
which explains the consequences for the browsing history and recommends using
a private tab. Then its absolutely ok and should be posted again on HN.

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Volv
Its interesting to me how many people complain about the history / request a
back button / link.

I agree that sites shouldn't break history but tabs have made the back button
almost obsolete to me.

Everything is middle clicked for new tab / middle clicked away when done.

I messed around with the site. Middle clicked it away and ended up here as I'd
opened the comments in a new tab before I started. Didn't even notice the
history issue.

~~~
_ph_
Indeed, in my normal browsing habits, I rarely rely on the back button, as it
usually forces a page reload which is very slow. Like you, I am using a stack
of tabs instead. On mobile though, I use the back button more, as tab creation
is not as easy (why no browser does this with a 2-finger tab, I don't
understand).

However, the side effect of this goes much further, it also hoses your
browsing history, and sometimes you really need that. So while this is a cool
hack, there shouldn't be a direct link on the HN front page.

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robbrown451
Ha. Pretty awesome. No luck using the back button to get back to Hacker News,
but I guess that's unsurprising.

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mfgs
Cool! Firefox on mobile doesn't render the emojis though, just long strings of
Unicode strings.

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_ph_
Please remove the direct link from the front page as it has negative effects
on the browser due to screwing up the browser history. This link should be
embedded in the post with a proper warning.

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hutattedonmyarm
For those on desktop Safari: You have to enable "Show full website address" in
its "advanced" settings tab

~~~
kevinventullo
I couldn’t figure out how to do this on Chrome for iOS. The relevant flag does
not seem to exist.

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rolltiide
Quite confused on iphone safari and then to find the back history was hijacked
as an integral component of this game

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halotrope
Very nice! However breaking the back button is very bad UX (remember ad-
stuffed pages that would not let go back to google). I think it should be
possible to change the hash without adding a new page by not using history
API.

~~~
jwilk
They are using location.hash.

history.replaceState() wouldn't break the back button, but apparently history
API is throttled in some browsers; see the "One Last Thing" section on
[https://matthewrayfield.com/articles/animating-urls-with-
jav...](https://matthewrayfield.com/articles/animating-urls-with-javascript-
and-emojis/) .

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tobyhinloopen
I should have known better to click this link

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MulliMulli
Cool stuff. A back button/link would be nice though.

