I hear what your saying. Do you have any suggestions? I already have links for each year on the page. I'm sort of experimenting with this simulation idea.
Suggestions other than
don't instruct the browser to leave the current page?
Fundamentally is is a javascript/DOM/AJAX question, using javascript to get data from the webserver (AJAX), and manipulating the current DOM to display this data
http://w3schools.com/ is a good starting point if you want to learn about these things, or try something like stackoverflow for q'n'a