Re: Backspace meaning "go back" in browsers

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From: Hakim Cassimally
Subject: Re: Backspace meaning "go back" in browsers
Date: 14:58 on 20 Dec 2004
I am in Squirrelmail, reading my web-spam.  I induce RSI by clicking on 20
boxes of penis enhancements and urgent business propositions ready for 
deletion
(yes, I could use Squirrelmail's "Select All" feature but such 
reasonableness is not
what hate is made of).

But hark!  *This* email might not be spam, let's have a look.  <click>  
Oh, it *was*
spam. Let's go back to the mail index.  Where, of course, my browser has 
decided
that, it won't go *back* to the page, retaining ticked checkboxes and 
scrollbar
settings.  No, it will refresh the page.  Because obviously that's what 
I wanted.

Firefox at least performs its hateful idiocy speedily.  IE tells me this 
was POSTed
information - am I sure I want to send the information again? but 
doesn't offer an
option "No you moron, just take me to the fucking page already".  Safari 
gives not
one but 2 popup messages, and then takes me back to the page at a 
leisurely pace,
having selected some of the ticked check-boxes at random.  Think different.

This kind of annoyance happens with a lot of corporate POST-happy sites:
thetrainline (hate hate hate) and so on.  Why can't browsers go back sanely?

Some of them can: Opera handles these sensibly (if the page is still 
cached, just
show the cached HTML including any form fillage and scrollbar location 
info) as it
was.  After all, if you *really* wanted to refresh, there's a perfectly 
good refresh
button, right?  (In case you're wondering, Opera is hateful in other 
ways,  such as
not being free, having a brilliant concept for e-mail which is let down 
by a buggy
implemetation which sometimes crashes randomly, and doesn't handle IMAP, 
but at
least it can handle something as simple as going back.)
--
osfamerom
There's stuff above here

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