AJAX navigation

[Viiprogrammer]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

No

Describe the solution you'd like

Add AJAX navigation for menu / @link and other links

Additional context

It's a little more convenient than page reload transitions, and on mobile it's faster and a little more economical.

[ankitskvmdam]

@Viiprogrammer Could you explain this a little bit more?

[Viiprogrammer]

With ajax navigation no page reload needed (when you click to the link it load content of page / page with fetch or XMLRequestHttp and insert getted HTML to current page HTML, after this push new url to browser history.

Examples of realization:

https://habr.com/ru/post/154617/ (available in Russian only :( )

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2586661/url-navigation-in-an-ajax-based-website

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/History_API/Example

[ankitskvmdam]

Oh.. I think it is something like SPA (Single Page Application).

Do you have any opinion/recommendation on how to implement this?

[Viiprogrammer]

yes, this technology was before spa and even now it is, where there is no spa, but unlike spa, it is usually there where ssr is used and it is easier to integrate it into any application, it is not necessary to rewrite it on spa

the only thing that is possible after «go to new page» with ajax is to call a couple of functions to initialize code highlighting and other things for the new HTML

[ankitskvmdam]

@Viiprogrammer does it mean that now we have to export files in .php, if so then it will change the overall workflow.

I have very limited (or no) knowledge of ajax navigation.

[Viiprogrammer]

I thought to do it without a backend (without php, node...) because there is no need for a backend, it will greatly complicate life) and will not give any profit

maybe it has some other name besides ajax/pjax, but I never thought about it

[backspaces]

11ty may be what you're looking for?

[ankitskvmdam]

@backspaces @Viiprogrammer I am working on a new version of clean-jsdoc-theme in which I will use next js. Do you have any opinions?

I have created a repo to test the possibilities. https://github.com/ankitskvmdam/clean-jsdoc-next

[backspaces]

I don't use React so don't know it's advantages. 11ty is so dead simple yet quite powerful especially for multi page apps. Otoh if you are looking for ready made components, React may be a win,

[Viiprogrammer]

@backspaces @Viiprogrammer I am working on a new version of clean-jsdoc-theme in which I will use next js. Do you have any opinions?

I have created a repo to test the possibilities. https://github.com/ankitskvmdam/clean-jsdoc-next

I was thinking about Vue / React options, but they have a problem in that they need SSR if you need to get Server side render and at the same time keep what SPA has.

Maybe It's possible to get both without actually rendering on the server side with Svelte
But I have never used Svelt and don't know for sure if there are any problems

[ankitskvmdam]

@backspaces I looking to directly port Nextra or something similar to this.

@Viiprogrammer There is an option in Next.JS to directly export all the static files.

The biggest advantage of using React is its ecosystem.

[Viiprogrammer]

@backspaces I looking to directly port Nextra or something similar to this.

@Viiprogrammer There is an option in Next.JS to directly export all the static files.

The biggest advantage of using React is its ecosystem.

In any case, a pretty good idea, I think it would be cool

[ankitskvmdam]

Hi @Viiprogrammer @backspaces, thanks for the suggestion, and sorry for the very long silence on this one.

To be upfront: v5 does not add AJAX / SPA-style navigation — clicking a link is still a real page navigation, not a client-side content swap. So the specific thing you asked for isn't implemented yet.

That said, v5 is a complete rewrite and the underlying architecture is now in a much better place to deliver the experience you were after:

• The site is built on Preact with lazy-hydrated "islands" — pages render as fast static HTML/SSR, then only the interactive bits hydrate, rather than shipping/booting a heavy bundle on every page.
• Navigation state (sidebar, theme, reading prefs) persists across pages, and there's an instant fuzzy command-palette search (Ctrl/⌘+K) so jumping around doesn't really depend on full-page browsing anymore.

It's not AJAX routing, but it may well give you the smoothness and lighter mobile footprint you were originally chasing. I'd genuinely value your take — could you try the alpha and tell me whether it already gets you what
you wanted, or whether true client-side navigation is still worth pursuing on top of it?

v5 is currently published as an alpha (v5.0.0-alpha.2), so please treat it as a preview — there may still be rough edges. If you spot anything broken, please open an issue and let me know 🙏

• 📖 Docs: https://ankdev.me/clean-jsdoc-theme/
• 🚀 Live demo (API docs): https://ankdev.me/clean-jsdoc-theme/api-docs/
• 📦 npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/clean-jsdoc-theme/v/5.0.0-alpha.2