The user isn't changing page, so you definitely shouldn't be using pushState. If you want to update the address bar, use replaceState. After clicking a few of them I certainly didn't expect to have to click back to cycle through them just to get back to HN.

I wouldn't be so quick to remove the pushState - people here are mostly complaining that they want to get back to hacker news. But I can see that people (I) would normally use this site as a reference. And being able to explore different options and then use keyboard navigation to go back / forward isn't that bad. You could have used different 'pages' for the content but you chose to make the UX really quick and light, but that doesn't mean we should lose back / forward nav.

But if you've got some other keyboard navigation to go back / forward then maybe it wouldn't be so much of a loss...

Great site, it's what the official docs should be.

I understand the rationale for doing it either way, but fwiw I prefer changing it so every card flips does not wind up in history. I think it has to do with the notion of "flipping" through the cards -- you're often just navigating through them to reach your desired goal, not reading them one by one as part of a linear narrative.

(I'm on my phone though so it's possible there's some alternate navigation on widescreen layouts that I'm not seeing).

I think the ability to copy/paste a URL to show exactly the state I'm looking at (I.E. #dropdown to see the dropdown.) Is great! But, after I scroll through a dozen, I want to hit back to go back to HN.

Yeah, get rid of historystate. It's annoying.

It both makes sense and is counter-intuitive to me at the same time. I see why you did it, and I see why some people would like it that way- however when I hit the back button I'm trying to leave the page, so it feels like I'm being held hostage.

The way it works now is quite useful. However, if I have a popup open, then dismiss it, the URL does not change back to having no fragment. I wish it did that.

For example, if I open two class popups, then hit the back button twice, I'd expect to end up on the overview page with no popup open, but what actually happens is the last popup stays up even while the URL changes.

The other case is, if I have a popup open, then close it, I'd expect the URL to change to having no fragment to reflect that, but instead the old fragment sticks, so a reload would actually show the last popup you had open.

These are obviously minor things and I like the project, so I hope not to come across too nitpicky.

Yes. Always. You'll find hijacking the back button is one of the most frequent first/top complaints in HN threads. :)

People are complaining a lot about it because they're just visiting it to explore before coming back to HN to comment. When people are actually using the page as a reference, it's much less likely that they'll want to go back to another website in the same tab.

I don't mind the back button behavior personally. This is intended mainly as a reference that you keep in your bookmarks, so you wouldn't have a previous page to go to in most cases. I can see how being able to move back/forward in history between 2 items would be useful.

I agree the on back button. To me this is a page. When I push back I expect to return to the previous page not a different view of the same page.

That being said, this is really awesome work and will certainly come in handy! Nice job.

I think the back button should function like clicking the X and closing the modal. Otherwise the modal stays there, I click a second time and now I'm not on your site anymore.

You can solve the back-button issue with a little better UX design.

Don't change the url when people are clicking on the urls, but have a share icon for each element that is placed in the modal that pops up when clicking on it.

In this way, url stays the same while people are checking the elements, and you can still have specific urls for each element for people to point to a specific demo if they want.

Share icon copies the url e.g "http://hackerthemes.com/bootstrap-cheatsheet#dropdown-header... to clipboard and visiting this url pops up the dropdown-header demo.

Use good old `window.location.replace(...)` - things will still be bookmarkable, but won't clutter history.

> Do other people feel the same way?

I find the back button as you implemented it handy.

Yea, I felt the same what parent mentioned.