242535 - The Back History seems to be forgotten frequently

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[Michael]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040206 Firefox/0.8
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040206 Firefox/0.8

This happens very frequently, but I cannot find a concrete pattern.
e.g.: You might try to go to yahoo and from there click on 'Shop: Auctions'. The
back button stays disabled.
This normally only happens on the first attempt to do this. if you manually go
back to yahoo and do the same again, the back button gets enabled and it works.

What never works, is if I enter a new address in the address bar. the back
button will always be disabled in this case. 

Reproducible: Sometimes
Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Jan Braun]

I was annoyed by this too, so let me explain:

Firefox doesn't forget the complete history, but just fails to add the page you
just left into the history.
i.e.:
be on http://a.com/
follow a link to http://b.com/
enter http://c.com/ into address bar

You are now on c.com, and the "back" button will take you to a.com, rather than
to b.com first (if you had started out on b.com, the "back" button would still
be disabled).
I never had this happening randomly, only when directly entering an URL (or
using the builtin google search)

This is with
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040206 Firefox/0.8

However, it works as expected in
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.8a2) Gecko/20040606 Firefox/0.8.0+

Comment 2

[Aaron Sloman]

I was about to report this 'losing history' behaviour in the specific context
of a failed url, which is the only context in which I have experienced it, when
I found this report.

It happens to me often and is extremely annoying. This is new in Firefox, and
does not happen in mozilla or older versions of firefox (firebird).

I can make it happen reliably as follows (firefox 9 and recent versions):

1. start a new tab
2. Give google some arbitrary set of words, e.g. 
    to be or not to be
   Some google entries will be displayed
    The next step requires a dud link. Since I am not sure you will get
    one from google, make your own, thus:
3. Clear the adress URL and type in a URL for a non-existent site, e.g.
    www.to.be.or.not.to.be
    and press RETURN

You get a message saying something like the following and the window title
changes to 'Page load error':

 Address Not Found

   www.to.be.or.not.to.be could not be found.

 The address (URL) does not correspond to a known site and could not be loaded.    
 This could be due to a misspelling in the address or because the site does not  
 exist. .... etc.....

 Try again

However you cannot go back to the previous page using either the 'Back' button
or the 'Back' option on right mouse button.

Worse: if you slightly mistyped a URL (or got a url with minor error by
clicking in the previous file) that faulty URL is not displayed in the
address panel so that you can easily correct it. Instead it is replaced by a
long URL for generating error messages (I think).

(I tried to add '(e.g. after failed URL)' to the Subject of the Bug as
I thought it might make it easier for some people to identify as the problem
they have encountered. However, bugzilla told me I was not sufficiently
empowered to do that.)

This bug has wasted me a lot of time and effort over several weeks since the
fault was introduced. At first I did not report it thinking it was so bad that
others would notice and get it fixed. But I have just downloaded and installed
Firefox 9 (on a linux PC) and it is still there.

The 'try again' option is pointless because more often and not it was a dud
url (there are many provided by google!)

However, in some cases the dud url includes a domain or web site that can be
searched, for more information, by editing the url.

But the bug stops you doing that.

Unfortunately, I am not a Firefox developer so I have no idea where the fault
might lie. I hope my description provides a repeatable scenario that will allow
developers to identify the problem since this is definitely an intolerable new
feature in Firefox - specific to Firefox, not in Mozilla.

Thanks for a (mostly) great browser!
Aaron
===
Aaron Sloman
www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs

Comment 3

[Chris Johns]

I'm not sure, but it happened recently for me as well - and this is the first
time on Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040206
Firefox/0.8
but it's happened on 0.9 too...

I had gmail open, and I closed the tab, had a slashdot window open - the
slashdot window had no back history, and had the gmail title.  When I opened a
new tab, all was fine again.

I'd upload a pic but I guess I need to wait for it to be confirmed?

Comment 4

[Chris Johns]

Attachment: picture of hte bug in action

Comment 5

[Aaron Sloman]

This seems to be a duplicate of this bug
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=231393
(Tab URL does not persist on bad links if tabs switched)

which has received a lot more attention.

It wastes me a great deal of time.

Comment 6

[Peter van der Woude [:Peter6]]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 231393 ***

Comment 7

[Peter van der Woude [:Peter6]]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041017 Firefox/1.0

followed the case as in comment 0 and 1

both WFM