There are a number of other browser history managers out there, the two most popular of which are Yahoo!'s Browser History Manager and Brad Neuberg's / Brian Dillard's Really Simple History. Both of those projects have been around for a longer period of time, are arguably more stable, and are thus self-admittedly more suitable for "enterprise-level" usage. However, dsHistory offers a number of unique features not found in any other history library I know of.

Central to the difference is the idea that dsHistory treats the window hash (the part of the URI after or including the # symbol) as a place to store supplemental data relating to the history "page" rather than a place to serialize the application state. The primary data relating to the "page" is associated with an arbitrary function and a JavaScript object of your choosing. What this means is that you can add to the browser history either with or without explicitly changing the window hash, the benefit of which is that you can store a great deal of information relating to each of those "pages." With dsHistory, the hash is just a place to store information for linking to / bookmarking the application state.

Additionally, like the YUI Browser History Manager, dsHistory has no external dependencies. Instead, I adapted a page out of Yahoo! developer Julien Lecomte's book o' tricks and create a self-sustaining frame on each page to keep track of the history for IE. What this means for you is that your server can breathe a bit easier by not having to serve up the extra blank HTML file that it would otherwise require.