History.js is your best bet for accomplishing this with cross browser support. You should realize that older browsers do not support direct manipulation of the URL and the hash tag (#) mechanism is used in its place.
Here is a portion of their getting started section:
(function(window,undefined){
// Prepare
var History = window.History; // Note: We are using a capital H instead of a lower h
if ( !History.enabled ) {
// History.js is disabled for this browser.
// This is because we can optionally choose to support HTML4 browsers or not.
return false;
}
// Bind to StateChange Event
History.Adapter.bind(window,'statechange',function(){ // Note: We are using statechange instead of popstate
var State = History.getState(); // Note: We are using History.getState() instead of event.state
History.log(State.data, State.title, State.url);
});
// Change our States
History.pushState({state:1}, "State 1", "?state=1"); // logs {state:1}, "State 1", "?state=1"
History.pushState({state:2}, "State 2", "?state=2"); // logs {state:2}, "State 2", "?state=2"
History.replaceState({state:3}, "State 3", "?state=3"); // logs {state:3}, "State 3", "?state=3"
History.pushState(null, null, "?state=4"); // logs {}, '', "?state=4"
History.back(); // logs {state:3}, "State 3", "?state=3"
History.back(); // logs {state:1}, "State 1", "?state=1"
History.back(); // logs {}, "Home Page", "?"
History.go(2); // logs {state:3}, "State 3", "?state=3"
})(window);
Check out these examples using HTML5 pustState directly:
Questions of a similar topic:
Other Resources: