How does Google plus page loading work

Question

On Google plus, when I click on a Google plus profile or any Google plus link the page gets redirected to that link without a full page load but the URL changed and a record added to browser history.

How this can be done? Is there any tutorial or document?

Answer 1

I would guess this is done with the HTML5 History API. I don't really have anything to back that up, other than than Github works this way.

There's several topics adressing this here already. Look at the links provided or those topics for more information.

Answer 2

history.pushState() should do what you want. The Mozilla Developer Network provides more information: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/DOM/Manipulating_the_browser_history. Keep in mind there may be browser support issues depending on what browsers you want to your website to work in.