188238 - Implement Snapback from Apple's Safari Web browser

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(SeaMonkey :: UI Design, enhancement)

Description

[u4664]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20021130
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20021130

Apple has a new Web browser called Safari. It uses a cool feature called
"Snapback" to return to previous pages.

E.g. let's say you're at a Google results page. You follow a series of links,
but later decide to return to the Google page. Pressing the Snapback button in
the Location bar will take you back to there instead of pressing the Back button
repeatedly or searching from the list of previously visited pages.

E.g. suppose you're at the homepage of a Web site, e.g. Amazon.com. After
following a series of links, you decide to go back to the homepage. Pressing the
Snapback button in the Location Bar will take you there, like in the above example.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to a Web page.
2. Follow a series of links.
3. Press the Snapback button to take you back to the page in step 1.

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

apps.

Comment 2

[stevenj]

A key point is that the snapback point is only set when you visit a web page in
one of a few ways: typing a URL, Google search (i.e. the search button),
clicking the home button or a bookmark.  In the case of Mozilla, I might also
suggest that clicking a link in an email or newsgroup post should set the
snapback point... basically, anything *except* simply clicking a link in the
browser window.

Comment 3

[Prognathous]

Opening a link in a new window or in a new tab should also count as a SnapBack
start-point.

Prog.

Comment 4

[Stefan Borggraefe]

Reasonable enhancement, so marking NEW.

Comment 5

[Prognathous]

*** Bug 233991 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 6

[Blake Ross]

Reassigning obsolete bugs to their respective Seamonkey owners (i.e. nobody). 
If you want this fixed for Firefox, change the Product and Component accordingly
and reassign back to me.

Comment 7

[Bamm Gabriana]

Basically a snapback point is any history item that doesn't have a referrer.
This includes anything that wasn't reached by a link in the same window or tab.
I believe that we could go further than safari by having multiple snapback
points, each click on snapback would simply go to the next snapback point. We
could even have "snap-forward" to then next item in the forward button list that
doesn't have a referrer, and so on.

Perhaps instead of a snapback button, we could use a keyboard combination like
Ctrl+Shift+BACK for snapback and Ctrl+Shift+FORWARD for snapforward.

Does the history keep track of whether or not an item has a referrer? If yes, we
just need a javascript hook; if not, it would be good to add this field.

Changed the product to Firefox, as this is where it is most useful.

Comment 8

[Prognathous]

Bamm, this is a Suite bug. For the Firefox equivalent, see Bug 233991.

Prog.

Comment 9

[Bamm Gabriana]

I thought that one has been marked a duplicate of this? Well, perhaps blake was
mistaken in comment #6. :)

Comment 10

[Prognathous]

It seems like Blake was doing a mass reassign, without taking into account
whether equivalent Firefox bugs already exist.

Prog.

Comment 11

[Keith Kim]

In the model you could have implicit snapback points where there's no referrer as well as explicit ones set by the user.

In the UI there would be a command to set a snapback point and one to return to the next earlier snapback point. If there is no earlier snapback point, please have the UI issue a regular back command as this makes programmed mouse buttons so awesome!

Comment 12

[Jonathan Watt [:jwatt]]

Mass bug change to replace various 'parity' whiteboard flags with the new canonical keywords. (See bug 1443764 comment 13.)

Comment 13

[Frank-Rainer Grahl (:frg)]

I doubt this will happen in this life or the next so lets close it. Would need Gecko and SeaMonkey changes. Reopen only if you think otherwise and want to work on it.