3 ms·

Yeah, this has annoyed me for a long time. I believe Opera comes closest to this ideal. Actually, it might even meet all of the criteria already. It's a shame I

Yeah, this has annoyed me for a long time. I believe Opera comes closest to this ideal. Actually, it might even meet all of the criteria already. It's a shame I can't use it. Edit: I think the only complete answer going forward is to treat it like suspending a machine. An open web page today is a running application with state. It would have to be frozen when you go to another page (so that it doesn't do stuff while you're gone), and resumed when you click the back button.

derefr 17y ago
In some ways, it would be suspending a machine: if a textbox were really a <canvas> controlled by Javascript, you'd have to suspend the Javascript VM state in order to still have the text upon going back.
- johnnybgoode 17y ago
  Yes, exactly, assuming you're using a JS VM. But I'm saying you'd have to preserve the JS state anyway, because anything on the page could depend on it.
  - IsaacSchlueter 17y ago
    Not just JS state, either. What if I have a flash movie running? When you middle-click a link on a YouTube video, the video keeps playing. You probably don't want pages in your history to be downloading data, playing video, etc. Ideally, you'd probably want it to start playing right where you left it when you click back. What about if the thing in my history is a 1gb video file, and I type "gmail.com" in the address bar. I have Firefox set to remember my state between sessions, and I rarely close my gmail tab. So, that video file might stay in my back-button history for months. Is it reasonable to expect it to freeze the video player's state and keep hold of that forever, every time the browser starts up? That'd probably suck. So, the author's suggestion isn't quite perfect. It's close, but misses some important edge cases, and misses the point of why this is very hard to do right.

3 ms·

Yeah, this has annoyed me for a long time. I believe Opera comes closest to this ideal. Actually, it might even meet all of the criteria already. It's a shame I

by johnnybgoode 17y ago

derefr 17y ago
In some ways, it would be suspending a machine: if a textbox were really a <canvas> controlled by Javascript, you'd have to suspend the Javascript VM state in order to still have the text upon going back.
- johnnybgoode 17y ago
  Yes, exactly, assuming you're using a JS VM. But I'm saying you'd have to preserve the JS state anyway, because anything on the page could depend on it.
  - IsaacSchlueter 17y ago
    Not just JS state, either. What if I have a flash movie running? When you middle-click a link on a YouTube video, the video keeps playing. You probably don't want pages in your history to be downloading data, playing video, etc. Ideally, you'd probably want it to start playing right where you left it when you click back. What about if the thing in my history is a 1gb video file, and I type "gmail.com" in the address bar. I have Firefox set to remember my state between sessions, and I rarely close my gmail tab. So, that video file might stay in my back-button history for months. Is it reasonable to expect it to freeze the video player's state and keep hold of that forever, every time the browser starts up? That'd probably suck. So, the author's suggestion isn't quite perfect. It's close, but misses some important edge cases, and misses the point of why this is very hard to do right.