Graham,
I have no objection to use forms via the browser back button if it is
useful, I think Google or Yahoo search are typical examples as well.
Though I am talking about applications where it is harmful or where it
doesn't make sense to display the form again or to access it via the web
browser history.
So should I allow it just because it is useful in some other cases? That
doesn't work for me, simply said, something is wrong and needs to be fixed.
I am using pseudo modal windows for data manipulation in a lot of cases
(DHTML wizards, etc run in pseudo modal mode), though they are pseudo
because I jut open a new window without the chrome, I didn't have a
single user which had any problem with it, though I remember one single
user which didn't know about the web browser back button :-).
By the way, I don't break the web browser button on the regular main
browser window, I simply don't use them in the opened pseudo modal
windows if it is not necessary, respectively if it could harm something.
My point is, you can browse web documents, but you can't browse web
applications, the browsing model is out of date.
Karl
J. Graham wrote:
On Sun, 26 Jun 2005, Karl Pongratz wrote:
can someone tell me why I should want, respectively why I am allowed
to return to a form page I just submitted, does that make any sense?
In order:
You might want to return to the form page to submit the form with
different details. A typical example of this would be a rail timetable
application where returning to the form page would allow adjustments
to the journey without having to reenter the unchanged data. This is
extremely common.
You are allowed to return to the previous form page because a) it's
more often useful than not and b) because allowing authors to mess
about with the back button would cause more harm than good. The back
button is widely understood (moreso than links and, especially, the
location bar, for example) and therefore important in making the web
usable. Unscrpulous authors would take advantage of the ability to
disable the back button to prevent users from backing out of their
sites. The user would have no clue why the back button worked on some
sites but not on others. To improve the UI, browser makers would
prevent the back button from being disabled (c.f. popup windows).
That's where most problems start in regard to web applications, this
is not the only problem, but probably one of the most significant
once, the browsing model. Can we change the browsing model? I think
yes, by introducing modal and modeless windows, view documents by
using the traditional browsing model, but anything else, manipulating
data and form submission, would be done in modal windows, and more.
Well, its not that simple, it may require to modify the caching model
and other parts as well, however, I consider them as the primer for
anything else.
Having different types of windows doesn't make much sense to me. If
you want to do abusable things like disabling the back button (or
reading local files or using chromeless windows or...) you need a way
for a user to indicate that they trust you not to do anything evil.
The most common way to do that at the moment is to run the application
locally (although this clearly doesn't work - most spyware runs
locally yet is evil)
.
