128884 - Navigating session history should not reload page content.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 33269

(Core :: DOM: Navigation, defect)

Description

[Lapo Luchini]

I search bugzilla thoroughly but, surprisingly, I found nothing about this one..
so either it is correct by design or no one ever thought about it.

Anyway IMHO pressing "back" or else navigating the history  should not request
the page to the server but should display EXACTLY the page that was recevied the
first time... or else it's pretty impossible to navigate form-driven sites or
printing form output (of course also printing a page should not re-load it for
printing, but using the cached page).

This unless the memory page is disabled or too small (but I doubt it can be too
smal to contain at least the pure HTML of the page)...

What do you think?
(I have the strong sensation that this issue has been already stressed a lot but
I really can't find NO BUG regarding this in the DB so, please, mark it
"duplicate" instead of flaming me -_^)

Comment 1

[Shark Daddy (Jonathan L.)]

Agreed. Partially...the navigation buttons/history are fine and work in the
right way, but you should be able to save e.g. pages that would have been
changed, for later viewing/printing easily, so here's what I propose (before I
file this enhancement in BugZ, I'd like to know if something along the lines of
this would solve this bug):

http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback/read.php?f=3&i=372&t=372

You could save anything in its current form including form data (I think) easily
and then do whatever with it later. It wouldn't be cached but rather in a
seperate folder.

Just a weird idea.

Comment 2

[Lapo Luchini]

<a href="http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1945.txt">RFC1945</a>, chapter 10.5:
>The Expires field cannot be used to force a user agent to refresh
>its display or reload a resource; its semantics apply only to caching
>mechanisms, and such mechanisms need only check a resource's
>expiration status when a new request for that resource is initiated.
>User agents often have history mechanisms, such as "Back" buttons and
>history lists, which can be used to redisplay an entity retrieved
>earlier in a session. By default, the Expires field does not apply to
>history mechanisms. If the entity is still in storage, a history mechanism
>should display it even if the entity has expired, unless the user has
>specifically configured the agent to refresh expired history documents.

The page also doesn't says that RFC1945 is obsolesced by any other RFC, so I
assumed that the back button behaviour was indeed incorrect, even if "following
the long history of behaviour of Netscape 4.x and before".

Maybe supoprting it as an option, or maybe with shift-back would be good (maybe
an option to select the default and shift to select the "not default
behaviour")... just a proposal =)

Comment 3

[Jesse Ruderman]

-> Session history (global history is Ctrl+H)

Comment 4

[xyzzy]

*** Bug 137653 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 5

[John Levon]

It's hard to find bug...

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 33269 ***