Popstate on page's load in Chrome

Question

I am using History API for my web app and have one issue. I do Ajax calls to update some results on the page and use history.pushState() in order to update the browser's location bar without page reload. Then, of course, I use window.popstate in order to restore previous state when back-button is clicked.

The problem is well-known — Chrome and Firefox treat that popstate event differently. While Firefox doesn't fire it up on the first load, Chrome does. I would like to have Firefox-style and not fire the event up on load since it just updates the results with exactly the same ones on load. Is there a workaround except using History.js? The reason I don't feel like using it is — it needs way too many JS libraries by itself and, since I need it to be implemented in a CMS with already too much JS, I would like to minimize JS I am putting in it.

So, would like to know whether there is a way to make Chrome not fire up 'popstate' on load or, maybe, somebody tried to use History.js as all libraries mashed up together into one file.

Answer 1

In Google Chrome in version 19 the solution from @spliter stopped working. As @johnnymire pointed out, history.state in Chrome 19 exists, but it's null.

My workaround is to add window.history.state !== null into checking if state exists in window.history:

var popped = ('state' in window.history && window.history.state !== null), initialURL = location.href;

I tested it in all major browsers and in Chrome versions 19 and 18. It looks like it works.