[WEB4LIB] back button

[Thomas Dowling]

At 04:05 PM 1/15/2002, Amy Stout wrote:
>Hi,
>
>Here's a question that came up at work today. Is it possible to set a 
>parameter in a web page that dictates where the browser will go when the 
>user hits the "back" button?
>
>Thank you,
>Amy


I sure hope not.

Javascript can read the browser's history stack, so for Javascript-enabled 
browsers a script may know where "Back" goes to, but to the best of my 
knowledge it can't change that value.  Thank goodness, because "Back" is 
about as fundamental a navigational idea as there is, and if your page were 
able to change a user's Back location it would seriously confuse many 
users, would be prone to abuse by nefarious web sites, and would generally 
cause the imminent death of the net (film at 11:00).  Seriously: in a 
client-server relationship like the web, the client gets exclusive rights 
to some functions, and a browser's history needs to be one of those functions.

You could--or should, IMO--articulate a logical "previous" document with a 
link element.  This will always be "previous" from the document's 
perspective, and not necessarily "back" from the user's perspective.  And 
it will currently be supported only in Netscape 6.2, Mozilla, Lynx, and a 
few less heavily used browsers.

Perhaps if you described the problem for which you're considering this, 
alternative solutions would arise.


Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu