Most of my projects over the last several years have included an interactive website component, one designed primarily to capture information from the user. My topic today is about how these websites deal with the browser controls such as the dreaded Back, Forward, Refresh, and Bookmark.
I’ve never encountered a deeper “religious” reaction from engineers (including myself) than on this issue. Many issues reach this level, but none have exceeded it.
Another characteristic of this issue is that it is often dismissed by the business users as minutia. The issue is a bit complex to understand, but I believe the real reason business dismiss it is because they are not driven to fully confront the related questions until it is too late to do something about it.
So what’s the problem?
Technically speaking, the issue’s core ...