Add flip ahead browsing to WordPress theme – Tutorial
- 1 minFlip ahead browsing is a new(ish) feature of Internet Explorer (10+), available in the new Windows UI browser. It allows users to navigate through you website without clicking the previous or next buttons. The MSDN says:
Flip ahead allows you to explore favourite websites like you would a magazine. By implementing flip ahead, you enable your users to flip through a news article or an online catalog, regardless of their actual location on the page.– MSDN
Whilst the Windows mobile device market share is relatively small, there is a growing user base who are enthusiastic about Windows devices.
At the recent Half Stack Conference, Christian Heilmann pointed out the Site Scan tool. It checks a whole host of things on your website, one of which is the use of Flip Ahead browsing.
Implementing in WordPress
Implementing ‘Flip Ahead’ browsing in WordPress could not be simpler thanks to a couple of built in functions. To include support for this feature in your WordPress theme add the following snippet to the head of your themes header.php file.
Line 2 & 3 determines if the current webpage is a single post of any type (excluding pages & archives). If it is, lines 4 & 8 fetch the appropriate post object before outputting the correct link. It’s the links rel attribute that makes the magic happen.
If the current browser does not support this feature, these tags will simply be ignored.
To find out more about this feature, be sure to check out the MSDN docs flip ahead page.
That’s it for page flipping. If you have any problems or questions about this short tutorial, feel free to get in touch with me on Twitter.