Twitter has the following UI behaviour that I want to replicate:
- a homepage https://twitter.com with an endless feed you can scroll down;
- if you click on a tweet it opens up with a dedicated URL (e.g. https://twitter.com/TheTweetOfGod/status/635493904834412545);
- this tweet appears to be an embedded page/section 'on top' of the original feed, which you can still see around the edges but shaded darker;
- If you click off the embedded tweet element (i.e. on the shaded area) you revert to the original https://twitter.com feed at the same point (i.e. page has not refreshed).
Note that if the tweet URL is opened up in a fresh tab then the author's profile page forms the shaded backdrop instead of the main feed page. So the main feed backdrop is only inherited if the tweet page has been accessed from https://twitter.com.
In web design terms does this design approach have a formal name/definition that might help me identify a suitable solution? I'm assuming it has a server-side dimension.