Sometimes it happens out of ignorance, too: a "simple" url which is advertised (at the level of com-slash-one-word) will involve a redirect, which will break the back-button. It's not a conscious effort, and it can be fixed. But it takes awareness to overcome it. Be nice about it: take 'em to Flaming Red Dining Room, and talk about it over the haggis and neeps.

Posted by: Frank on February 15, 2003 04:51 PM

---

 

Posted by: on February 16, 2003 01:31 PM

---

 

I agree that sites which disable the Back button are buttholes.

There are some common situations where a lot of sites break the Back button, but as far as I can see there are better solutions.

Some e-commerce applications disable BACK to prevent confusion / duplicate transactions. There is no need for this if the server-side programming is properly designed. I wrote an article for ColdFusion Developer's Journal which describes a solution which does not kill BACK - and I tested the solution thoroughly before I dared to submit the article!

Redirects (e.g. because a site has moved) often break the Back button, but that's either fear or sloppy coding. You can avoid breaking the Back button if you just display a "please click" message and a link to the new URL. Some sites don't do this because they are afraid that users won't be sufficiently interested. If Javascript is enabled in the user's browser, you can redirect without breaking the Back button by location.replace(newURL) in version 3 or later browsers. If Javascript is not enabled, display NOSCRIPT block containing the message and link. DON'T use anything like META HTTP-EQUIV=Refresh CONTENT="10; URL=newURL - that's guaranteed to break the BACK button.

Posted by: Philip Chalmers on February 16, 2003 04:53 PM

---