If your Meteor app/site uses routes (e.g: IronRouter) and needs to run in an older browser (pre-HTML5) you will need a Polyfill for HTML5 History.
This package loads a file called history.js into your app giving older browsers the HTML5 History API
mrt add HTML5-History-API
(That's it. Back to building your awesome Meteor App!)
This package loads HTML5 History API which uses history.js.
Most of the time you will not interact directly with the History API by writing
History.pushState in your app (IronRouter does that for you),
but if you ever want to learn more about (re-)writing history see below.
Modern ("Single Page") Web Apps change the url in the browser and display fresh content without refreshing the page.
In order to remember which pages have been visited (and thus be able to use the browser's back/forward button) the HTML5 History was added.
Demos: http://html5demos.com/history
Sadly, 20% of internet users are still stuck on Internet Explorer pre v.10 (and older versions of both IOS and Android's stock browsers do not support HTML5 History) so in order to give these visitors the single-page-app experience you need to include this package.
See: http://caniuse.com/#search=history
- MDN article: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/API/DOM/Manipulating_the_browser_history
- How IronRouter uses History: https://github.com/EventedMind/iron-router/blob/dev/lib/client/location.js