162599 - "Clear cache" should clear form data from session history

Status: NEW

(Core :: DOM: Navigation, defect)

Description

[Heikki Toivonen (remove -bugzilla when emailing directly)]

In addition to automatically controlling what gets stored in the session
history, I would really expect hitting the "Clear cache" button in prefs to
clear form data from session history as well.

Comment 1

[Darin Fisher]

why?  what does this buy us?

Comment 2

[Heikki Toivonen (remove -bugzilla when emailing directly)]

I believe the automatic controlling handles issues that are more about security,
and it obviously won't be nice to always automatically clear all form data.
Hitting clear cache seems like the intuitive way to do this, although
historically this has been achieved by closing the browser window (? I never was
sure why some sites asked me to close the window). What if I don't want to close
the window? The session history shows me some useful sites I visited in this
window and I use it as a convenient way of getting back to them. I actually use
this way of getting to past URLs a lot (I can just jump over the pages that had
form posts etc. and go directly to earlier URLs).

Comment 3

[Darin Fisher]

heikki: but even if we clear form data from session history, session history
will still contain the forms from which the form data originated.  moreover,
layout history state will still fill in the forms as the user last saw them, so
users would still be able to re-submit the forms if they wanted.  so, i don't
see the difference between that and having session history hold onto the
accumulated form data.  maybe the only difference is that the user would see the
"must re-POST" error dialog instead of a broken page (or whatever we'd show if
there wasn't form data with which to recreate the lost-from-cache page).

Comment 4

[Heikki Toivonen (remove -bugzilla when emailing directly)]

Hmm, maybe I stated things incorrectly. I want clear (memory) cache to clear
layout history state that includes any information I have entered (scroll state
is ok, if that is stored there, but I would be ok even if that was wiped out
too)... One more thing to make it possible to wipe out all the information about
session without closing windows or quitting the browser. Obviously needed more
in kiosk mode. I am not claiming this is a high priority, but I do think this is
a real issue.

Comment 5

[Darin Fisher]

sure, i see what you're getting at now... perhaps it almost would be better to
have a clear session history button under the prefs for session history??  but,
i still think closing the browser window is the easiest conceptually for users.

Comment 6

[Heikki Toivonen (remove -bugzilla when emailing directly)]

Perhaps, although I don't think it is clear to the users what session history
contains. For example, I thought it only contained the URLs (based on the text
in the pref for session history), and I thought cache contained the past pages,
including the data I had entered in forms (this is also kind of implied in the
text on the cache prefs page).

Maybe we should have clear session history button, and in addition have a
checkbox or something next to that button and clear memory cache button which,
if set, would also clear the memory cache or session history, respectively. Or
clarify things in the decriptive text. Or do both. I think we need to involve UI
designers in this issue.

Comment 7

[Darin Fisher]

yeah, we definitely need to get some UI folks to comment on this.

Comment 8

[timeless]

*** Bug 174696 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 9

[Jo Hermans]

related to bug 11008