Removing query strings (parameters) from URLs

I’m getting annoyed when my browser’s address bar is full because of meaningless parameters that where appended to the “real” URL and which make no sense to me. The problem with the “Junk” is that people copy&paste the URL from the address bar which makes the junk propagate all around the web.

This might even do actual damage if the site owner relies on the parameters to differentiate between sources of traffic.

It is a good thing that one of the features of HTML5 – controlling browser history, can be used to update the address bar to new URL without making a redirect

<script type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">
  url = the canonical URL for the address
  if (typeof history.replaceState === 'function') { // check html5 functionality support
    data = {dummy:true};
    history.replaceState(data,'',url);
  }
</script>

This will work for modern browsers only, but who realy cares about IE users? they deserve the clutter! 😉