323922 - Using Back button on Google gives search results out of sync with search strings

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Core :: DOM: Navigation, defect)

Description

[Thomas Hedden]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051219 SeaMonkey/1.0b
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051219 SeaMonkey/1.0b

If you do a series of searches on Google and use the Back button (or Alt-arrow key or the Go menu) to look at previous searches, the search results displayed and the search strings that produced these search results are one position out of sync. That is, if I search for "Rocky and Blulwinkle" (with typo), then search for "Rocky and Bullwinkle" (corrected), and then press the Back button, I will see the search results for search for "Rocky and Blulwinkle" (with typo), but the search string "Rocky and Bullwinkle" (corrected) appears in the search box. The same thing is true of the Forward button. It appears that the caching is decrementing / incrementing the position of certain information (post ?) differently from the page itself.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. To to Google: http://www.google.com
2. Enter some searches that are different enough to distinguish them easily.
3. Press the Back and Forward buttons to move around within the search results; while doing so, compare the search results with the search strings that produced the results.
Actual Results:  
Search results are always one position out of sync with the search strings.

Expected Results:  
Search results should be in sync with the search strings.

If memory serves, this bug is also found in the Linux alpha version.

Comment 1

[Andrew Schultz]

this is expected actually.  The new bfcache mechanism restores the page to the exact state it was in when you left it.  When you left the first search page it had "Rocky and Blulwinkle" and that text was restored when you went back to it.

Comment 2

[Thomas Hedden]

Well, it may be expected by the programmer, but it
certainly isn't expected by the user. The reason
why a person searching on Google presses the "Back"
button is partly to examine previous results --
in which case it is merely CONFUSING that the
search string is out of sync with the results --
and partly to modify a previous search -- which
is made IMPOSSIBLE by this behavior: The user has
to retype the entire search string, rather than
modify it. As a heavy Google user, I find this
behavior downright obnoxious. 
This is not the way Mozilla used to behave, and,
FYI, this is not the way the IE6.0 behaves.

Comment 3

[Andrew Schultz]

> and partly to modify a previous search -- which is made IMPOSSIBLE by this 
> behavior:

Hardly.  Go back twice and you'll get what you're looking for.  Or go back once and hit ^Z (or Edit->Undo).

> This is not the way Mozilla used to behave, and, FYI, this is not the way the 
> IE6.0 behaves.

That's because newer versions have a feature that restores the page as it was when you hit BACK.  This feature is a Good Thing, is not coming out and will cause the behavior you're seeing.  If you want to disable it set the pref "browser.sessionhistory.max_viewers" to 0.

dumping in session history so someone more authoritative can repeat what I said

Comment 4

[Thomas Hedden]

I checked two other browsers:
Konqueror (v. 3.1.4) - same as IE (strings & results in sync);
Safari (v. 1.2.4) - same as Seamonkey (strings & results out of sync).
Haven't checked Opera yet.