Click a link and need to go back 10x to get back. Yes, I enjoy the footballs.

  • @officermike@lemmy.world
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    1499 months ago

    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.

    • yeehaw
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      569 months ago

      I usually right click the back button and go 2 entries back. Done.

      Microsoft also does this a lot on some of their sites.

    • @Valmond@lemmy.world
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      139 months ago

      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

      • Canadian_Cabinet
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        29 months ago

        I’ve had this happen only when I go back too quickly, before the page can completely load in

      • @brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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        28 months ago

        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.

  • The Pantser
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    809 months ago

    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.

    • @ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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      299 months ago

      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.

      • @SplashJackson@lemmy.ca
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        79 months ago

        I can handle life without the legitimate use case if it means no more clickjacking bs from companies that should know better

        • @ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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          119 months ago

          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).

          • @gwen@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            69 months ago

            like people who disable Javascript).

            i do that, and i found that a TON of microsoft & bank/work websites just refuse to do anything without it. i love the modern internet /s

          • ggppjj
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            39 months ago

            I’m frustrated that removing bad functionality is being treated as a slippery slope with obviously bad and impossible jokes as the examples chosen.

            I see a bad feature being abused, and I don’t see the removal of that bad feature as a dangerous path to getting rid of email. I don’t ascribe the same weight that you seem to towards precedent in this matter.

            • @ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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              18 months ago

              I’ve been working in full stack for long enough to know that history manipulation is as much a part of the modern web as images and email. I’m not trying to be flippant, that’s just the state of the modern web. Single-page apps are here, and that’s a good thing. They’re being used badly, and that’s endemic to all features. So no, history manipulation is not “bad functionality,” though I admit it’s not fully baked in its current implementation.

              • ggppjj
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                18 months ago

                I accept that it’s how things are, I just personally feel as though the only way this feature could ever work as it does now is with the implementation it has now, and that the convenience of single page webapps that use history manipulation is not worth the insane annoyance of helping my grandma get out of websites that tell her that she has been hacked by the FBI.

      • deejay4am
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        29 months ago

        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.

        • @ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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          59 months ago

          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.

          • ggppjj
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            18 months ago

            I think the word ‘app’ was being used in place of ‘webapp’ there, which is the general target audience for this feature.

            • @ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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              18 months ago

              Yes, I think you’re correct, but using browsers to coerce the web back into static documents will result in companies creating their own apps so that they can continue to deliver experiences. And the past 10+ years has shown that users will absolutely follow them.

              • ggppjj
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                18 months ago

                Sorry, this comment was mainly just providing the previous user with a correction because they seemed to think that the other person that they were replying to was talking about forcing people to use phone apps, which I assume we all agree is bad and would likely work if there were a concentrated push for it.

                Concerning your points after “using the browser”: I want websites to use replaceState and manage their own intra-page navigation with a cookie. They can still intercept the back button as they do now, but they should only get the single history entry until they switch to a new page, if they ever do.

  • @randon31415@lemmy.world
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    709 months ago

    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.

    • IndiBrony
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      9 months ago

      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.

      • Angry_Autist (he/him)
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        19 months ago

        I’d love that, my entire frontpage is the same 30 things over and over unless I deliberately sort for something then it’s a DIFFERENT 30 things over and over

    • A Wild Mimic appears!
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      69 months ago

      thats the reason why i always open links with middle click to open a new tab. helps with the above fuckery too.

      • @Skyhighatrist@lemmy.ca
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        49 months ago

        What’s worse is that YouTube sometimes doesn’t do that, i.e. when you hit back it shows the same list from the cache or something. It gives you hope and makes it worse on those occasions when it does fully refresh on back.

  • ‮redirtSdeR
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    469 months ago

    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.

    • @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      19 months ago

      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.

  • @foggy@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Three things.

    1. Yes. Sometimes this is malice. Sometimes this is an attempt to drive impressions and page views.

    2. This can also be caused by poorly configured web applications that update in real time. If, say, some sports website is giving you real-time data about the game as it progresses, a poorly configured web application might be creating a dynamic URL for every change. When you access the older page, it will be instructed to take you to the most recent data, so pressing back is taking you to old data on that page, and then immediately realizing that data is old so refreshing it with the most relevant data.

    3. This is a super common misconfiguration in single page web applications. Domain.com will take you to an application that renders at domain.com/en-us/home. Pressing back takes you to domain.com, and guess what happens next?

    This is basically 99.99% of these cases. I would say if its on some shitty news site with 1000 ads that somehow sneak by AdBlock and UBlok Origin, it’s case 1. Otherwise, it’s case 2 or 3.

    The picture instance is either case 1 or 2.

    • @ajikeshi@lemmy.world
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      29 months ago

      and neither case provides a service in a state that should be exposed to the outside. Either due to malice or incompetence.

    • FuglyDuck
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      09 months ago

      Any website managed/developed by someone certified in the last decade or more knows not to do that.

      It’s absolutely malicious, both to drive SRO and to keep “accidental” clicks from backing out so quickly

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky
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    179 months ago

    This is one of the absolute greatest reasons to support opening most everything in a new tab (as long as you don’t end up like my mom who at one point had over 100 tabs on her phone). Doesn’t matter if it’s a link from the same website, from a search engine, or whatever else there is. New tab.

    • ✺roguetrick✺
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      9 months ago

      Then on android Firefox you accidentally hit the back button and it closes the tab and you can’t go forward and you already navigatedc away from the originating page on the other tab forcing you to open your history and try to figure out where the hell it is.

      • @ChanchoManco@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        Ctrl Shift T doesn’t work on that case?

        Edit: I skipped the Android bit, sorry.

        Edit 2: From the 3 dots menu INSIDE the tabs view you can access a list of recently closed tabs, not nearly as fast as a 3 key combo, but maybe better than looking for the tab in the history. Also apparently there’s an extension that may help.

  • @Katana314@lemmy.world
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    159 months ago

    What makes me angry here is, I am 90% sure the browsers could code against this.

    If the user clicks a control on a webpage one time, the stack can declare “One user click! You have earned yourself One (1) navigation.” Then, the click activates some JavaScript that moves you to a new webpage. That new webpage has an auto-loader redirect that instead runs a 300ms timeout, and then takes you to some other page. The browser, meanwhile, has seen this, and establishes “We are still only operating off of that One (1) click. So, instead of adding a new page to the user history, we’ll replace that first navigation.”

    I have yet to hear a satisfactory reason as to why that’s not possible.

    • @Robert7301201@slrpnk.net
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      69 months ago

      We just got vertical align last month. There’s so many things they should be working on but are too busy trying to add more ads or monetization features.

      I think the web is just too long in the tooth at this point but there’s nothing we can do.

      • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ
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        69 months ago

        CSS features like vertical alignment would be defined by web standards. Those fall under the non-profit org W3C. They’re pretty slow about things as to not break the fuck out of everything.

        Browser behaviour like merging redirects falls on browsers tho, so yeah, we can blame Chrome or FF on that one.

        • @Overshoot2648@lemm.ee
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          29 months ago

          Still waiting for CSS Color 4 so SVG gradients don’t look like shit. sRGB gradients are completely broken.

  • @Eiri@lemmy.ca
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    149 months ago

    I’ve always wondered. Is there really a benefit to a ton of redirects like that? Like, do they gain anything by making it harder to back out?

    Or is it just extremely incompetent website programming?

  • @ober9000@lemmy.world
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    129 months ago

    Aren’t they scamming their advertisers too? Because if you click the back button a bunch of times it’s gonna reload a bunch of them on every click. At least if your internet is fast enough.

  • KillingTimeItself
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    119 months ago

    just click again, but fast enough to get the redirect, but not too fast to miss it and double click, and try not to do it a third time or you’re going back a few ages.