Click a link and need to go back 10x to get back. Yes, I enjoy the footballs.
Yeah, I also hate back-button hijacking. I suspect some websites do it to artificially force more page views for ad revenue. Try a long-press on the back button to view the history for that browser tab and click on the most recent page you think won’t redirect.
I usually right click the back button and go 2 entries back. Done.
Microsoft also does this a lot on some of their sites.
Youtube does it, and it just continues to blast the wrong video you accidentally just auto-started because instead if fucking off, it shows other videos with the bad video getting just reduced.
Aaargh for the state of todays internet
I hate that this is even a feature in the web standard. A result of some massive corporate corruption for sure.
I recently looked into this after it seemed like Facebook messed with my back button on a private mobile window:
Someone pointed out that it’s nice to have, for example, your email provider know that you probably want to go back for a message to your inbox instead of going back to the previous page.
But what if browsers monitored which sites abused the feature and showed a pop-up when you click the back button, just like they offer to show you notifications? They could show you:
This site has been reported to hijack the back button. Would you like to go back to the last domain that you visited?
and offer to remember the setting.
This could easily be fixed by the browsers but they don’t. Sure wish these back button tricks would stop. Especially news sites try to keep you from getting back to your search and makes your page refresh over and over. I wonder if that behavior counts as hits to their advertisers.
I don’t know about “easily.” replaceState() is actually intended to make single-page apps easier to use, by allowing you to use your back button as expected even when you’re staying on the same URL the entire time.
Likewise, single-page apps are intended to be faster and more efficient than downloading a new static page that’s 99.9% identical to the old one every time you change something.
Fixing this bad experience would eliminate the legitimate uses of replaceState().
Now, what they could do is track your browser history “canonically” and fork it off whenever Javascript alters its state, and then allow you to use a keyboard shortcut (Alt + Back, perhaps?) to go to the “canonical” previous item in history instead of to the “forked” previous item.
I can handle life without the legitimate use case if it means no more clickjacking bs from companies that should know better
I’d prefer not to let the bad actors dictate browser design.
“Let’s get rid of images since companies can use images to spoof browserchrome elements.”
“Let’s get rid of text since scammers can pretend to be sending messages from the computer’s operating system.”
“Let’s get rid of email since phishing exists.”
Nah. We can do some stuff (like the aforementioned forked history) to ameliorate the problem, and if it’s well-known enough, companies won’t find it necessary anymore. Heck, browsers like Firefox would probably even let you select Canonical Back as the default Back Button behavior, and then you can have the web the way you want it (like people who disable Javascript).
Pop a window open with a your app in it (with the user’s permission) without a back button if you want that.
A web page should be a document, not an experience.
That would absolutely make everything worse, no question; the web should be more integrated, not less. We shouldn’t incentivize even more companies to silo off their content into apps.
Also: Algorithmic generated feeds where you try to click on one thing, but you click on the next thing in the list and when you click back, the feed looks completely different because it has new information on you. That thing you wanted to click on is gone and will never return.
That’s actually how I do my Lemmy feed. I have one chance to comment on a thread and if I don’t do it, when the page refreshes I lose it forever.
I’ve learned to accept that there are just some things the universe never wanted me to comment on.
thats the reason why i always open links with middle click to open a new tab. helps with the above fuckery too.
…and now you’ve hit upon my other peeve: (mostly shopping) sites coded to disable browsing links in a new tab…
Perhaps it’s because I never raw dog the web, and using uBlock Origin on “medium mode” somehow fixes it, but I don’t think I have ever experienced that.
I have experienced sites that block right clicking, and that has always infuriated me. But I was able to get a little FF extension that disables right click blocking on websites. Which is pretty useful for downloading videos on sites that try to stop you from downloading their videos (though some have wisened up and can completely disable the ability to save a video through that method. The “save video as” option is completely greyed out). yt-dlp usually works in those cases, or one of the countless web-based video downloaders… but still annoying.
Youtube recommended videos does this. Not a huge issue because I can always search for the video myself but it’s annoying.
I don’t understand why browsers support this “functionality”.
It’s not for this, of course. It’s because in the world of single page applications built in react and angular where there is no physical back, like no actual server page to go back to just JavaScript, you have to code in what the back button means. Even though there’s no server calls to ask for a new page. New page. Most people still expect that forward and back will still go forward and back in standard navigation.
Sites like this it’s pretty clear that they just overwrite that with the last 20 calls to their own page, but the alternative is that single page applications would not be able to have forward or back functionality
Great I’ll just add a unique guid to each path that is ignored and returns to the same place. You show me a 10 foot fence I’ll show you an 11 foot ladder.
It’s a very “dumb” implementation of a generally useful feature. Browsers don’t keep track of how many times you’re redirected to the same site or try to consolidate the back-button list accordingly, but they certainly could. Wouldn’t be surprised if there was a plugin to this effect.
I was just thinking about this.
Super annoying because it can actually be fixed by using History.replaceState() over History.pushState().
I guess the reason they do it is either to keep you stuck on their sucky site, or just incompetence.
You’re right, but “incompetence” seems harsh. Maybe I’m just sensitive today.
Hanlon’s Razor: Don’t attribute to malice what can be sufficiently explained by stupidity.
I feel like when you’re talking corporations, hanlons razor needs to be reversed. Never attribute to stupidity what could be adequately explained by malice. We’ll call it Nolnahs razor.
Big Hanlon fan, but I don’t think stupidity is enough to explain why the site behaves that way.
