Firefox needs to do something about Back-Button-history loading

[KirkH420]

Websites are regularly filling up the back-button history with several copies of the same page, or even injecting different URL that the user never visited.

Please come up with a way to stop websites from having the ability to inject URLs into the back button. I don't even see why this is a desirable feature to have in a web browser. Back should do what it's intended for, not be manipulated by web designers to send the user somewhere else (or keep them on the page.) Thanks.

[jscher2000 · Accepted solution]

There is a preference related to this which hasn't been switched to true because... I'm not sure, maybe there are bugs? If you want to try it:

(A) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

More info on about:config: Configuration Editor for Firefox. Please keep in mind that changes made through this back door aren't fully supported and aren't guaranteed to continue working in the future.

(B) In the search box in the page, type or paste browser.navigation.requireUserInteraction and pause while the list is filtered

(C) Double-click the preference to switch the value from false to true

[ssbarnea]

I was not able to make the back key work correctly regarding the combination of browser.navigation.requireUserInteraction and browser.backspace_action I configure. With the later one set to 0, I get the previous url pasted into the URL bar but the page is not loaded. I need to press enter to really go back to the original page and that will also translate to a page reload, meaning that original position on the page will be lost.

[jscher2000]

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@ssbarnea wrote:

I was not able to make the back key work correctly regarding the combination of browser.navigation.requireUserInteraction and browser.backspace_action I configure. With the later one set to 0, I get the previous url pasted into the URL bar but the page is not loaded. I need to press enter to really go back to the original page and that will also translate to a page reload, meaning that original position on the page will be lost.

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I don't know whether this is a known issue. If you don't mind filling in nerdy forms, you could file a bug on https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/.

[phiSgr]

It seems to me that setting this to true breaks history in YouTube with autoplay. Maybe a desirable behaviour would be requiring user interaction OR some duration?

[KirkH420]

Hey, thanks for the answer! I will give this a try. I appreciate the tip.

Since it will probably be a while for me to test this out, I'll go ahead and mark the answer as accepted now, and next time I come back here, if it lets me, I'll leave a comment regarding how it worked for me.

Thanks again.

[dmolony]

This is probably related - many web sites are loading pictures and graphics after the initial page is loaded. Unfortunately the back button treats each load as a separate page, so we end up needing to press 'back' two or more times to leave the page. Couldn't Firefox treat all of those component loads as one logical page, and the have the back button skip back past all of them with a single click?

[jscher2000]

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@dmolony wrote:

This is probably related - many web sites are loading pictures and graphics after the initial page is loaded. Unfortunately the back button treats each load as a separate page, so we end up needing to press 'back' two or more times to leave the page.

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I haven't seen it with "lazy loaded" images but if I scroll down to what a site considers a different story, it may change the URL on the address bar, and Firefox treats that the same as if you had clicked a link in a table of contents in the page. If you check the Library window (Ctrl+Shift+H or Show All History or Manage History), can you see a difference in the URLs before and after the images/graphics loaded?

[Brian_Hardy]

My suggestion is that Firefox should keep a record of mouse, etc. clicks, and provide the facility to go back to the page and position on the page where we were before that click. This might be with a distinct BackClick button, or could be achieved by a double-click event on the back button.