Browser back button

[ns21]

How can the browser back button be disabled If the form is submitting
information to other pages or submitting to itself or using
redirections.

I tried the tweaks like history.forward(1) in each page to prevent user
to navigate back but its not very effective.

The server side scripting is done using ASP.

you may ask that why at first place I want to disable the browser back
button, this is due to the following issue
http://groups.google.co.in/group/aspnet/browse_thread/thread/77a38b4635b32b88

In absence of response from responsible MVPs, I decided to provide a
back button in the application that use redirection mechanisms but
since user always has back button on browser, it makes the application
error-prone.

Thanks,

 

[Randy Webb]

ns21 said the following on 8/8/2006 2:46 AM:

How can the browser back button be disabled

Make sure there is no other page opened first. Otherwise, it can't be
disabled.

If the form is submitting information to other pages or
submitting to itself or using redirections.

Whether it is submitting information to another page, itself, to
nowhere, using redirects, is all irrelevant. You can't disable the back
button if the browser enables it.

I tried the tweaks like history.forward(1) in each page to prevent user
to navigate back but its not very effective.

It's not a "tweak", its a .001% effective hack is all.

The server side scripting is done using ASP.

ASP, PHP, PERL, it's irrelevant what server side language is used to
generate what the browser deals with.

you may ask that why at first place I want to disable the browser back
button, this is due to the following issue
http://groups.google.co.in/group/aspnet/browse_thread/thread/77a38b4635b32b88

Fix your back end and stop trying to fix the wrong problem. Your server
side code should be able to handle *anything* the client does - and -
recover from it without client side hacks to prop it up.

In absence of response from responsible MVPs,

I only know 1 responsible MVP.

I decided to provide a back button in the application that use
redirection mechanisms but since user always has back button on
browser, it makes the application error-prone.

If the Back button breaks your app, it was error-prone before the Back
button was discovered.

 

[ns21]

Thanks Randy for quick reply,

You are right that I could be in wrong direction to fix the wrong
problem.

But the issue, which I am facing is the originator of the wrong
approach.
The issue mentioned in this thread
http://groups.google.co.in/group/aspnet/browse_thread/thread/77a38b4635b32b88

This is really not specific to ASP, its rather a browser level issue
but since I was working on ASP I posted that into ASP forum.

I have posted very small code in the thread above that helps simulating
the issue, I am not using any backend operations... the page is only
displaying date time from the server.
The REAL requirement is to make sure that page get fresh copy from the
server and on hitting back button it should not through Page can not be
displayed error.

Can you pls help?

 

[David Dorward]

How can the browser back button be disabled If the form is submitting
information to other pages or submitting to itself or using
redirections.

The standard patten is to process the POST request then redirect (which will
be a GET request). If the user hits back they go to the form page, not the
form handler, so the data doesn't get reposted.

 

[Fabien Schoenenberger]

How can the browser back button be disabled If the form is submitting
information to other pages or submitting to itself or using
redirections.

I tried the tweaks like history.forward(1) in each page to prevent user
to navigate back but its not very effective.

The server side scripting is done using ASP.

you may ask that why at first place I want to disable the browser back
button, this is due to the following issue
http://groups.google.co.in/group/aspnet/browse_thread/thread/77a38b4635b32b88

In absence of response from responsible MVPs, I decided to provide a
back button in the application that use redirection mechanisms but
since user always has back button on browser, it makes the application
error-prone.

Thanks,

I doubt you can...
History object should not be accessible (at least on W3C compliant
browsers ...) .
If you are using Firefox, have a look on PrivilegeManager, but I don't
think you can change this behavior.

 

[ns21]

David,

This is a good option and it works for my small POC. but it cannot be
applied to this application as there is lot of inline code and
processing, its like performing the search and drill down pages, few
drill down pages also perform search resulting in more pages.

What is the main reason that the Page do not refresh automatically if
submit was Hit and back is pressed?

how do you handle this "submit hit + back enabled + NO page cannot be
displayed error" in large applications that strictly dont allow any
kind of cache?