url doesnt change

[zee644]

Question:

You know how when you are some sites and then you go to a different page on that site the URL doesnt change so you cant link directly to the page

How do they do this and why do they do this?

[terrawolf]

It's very likely that they're using a frameset.
Or they could be using some server side features such as mod rewrite...

[Kravvitz]

mod_rewrite wouldn't do that.

They're most likely using a frameset but they could be using AJAX.

They do it because they don't understand how annoying it is for users to not be able to link to pages directly.

PHP includes (http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.include.php) and SSI (http://httpd.apache.org/docs/howto/ssi.html) are much better alternatives.

Whay are frames so evil? (http://www.html-faq.com/htmlframes/?framesareevil)
Why Frames Are Bad (http://karlcore.com/articles/article.php?id=2)
http://apptools.com/rants/framesevil.php
http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200411/who_framed_the_web_frames_and_usability/
Why Frames Suck (Most of the Time)(1996) (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9612.html)
What's wrong with frames? (http://www.htmlhelp.com/design/frames/whatswrong.html)
http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles/framesnoframes.htm

[zee644]

Thanks guys, I had a client that was trying to link to a specific page on someone else's site but couldnt. I didnt even think of framesets.

I use SSI myself, and being pretty new to web design I don;t know much about framesets except thay are bad.

But point is, thanks, now I can tell my client why its doing that