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A new spam policy for “back button hijacking”

developers.google.com

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Re: A new spam policy for “back button hijacking”

#52
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really comes down to JavaScript. The web was fine when sites were static HTML, images, and forms with server-side rendering (allowing for forums and blogs).

Did you use the web back in 1995? It was fun, but it also sucked compared to what we have now. Nothing is ever perfect, but I wouldn’t want to go back.

> Did you use the web back in 1995?

I'm still not over the loss of Gopher.

Re: A new spam policy for “back button hijacking”

#53
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happened to me yesterday through a link off here. I was already expecting it given the domain, but usually mashing back fast enough does the trick eventually. Not this time. Had to kill the tab.

In most browsers you can hold the back button for a second and it will let you skip back more than one step.

And some websites consume the entire history that a browser displays in that menu

Re: A new spam policy for “back button hijacking”

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you use the web back in 1995? It was fun, but it also sucked compared to what we have now. Nothing is ever perfect, but I wouldn’t want to go back.

I’d go back in a heartbeat. Making the web a software SDK was the worst thing to happen to it.

Gemini websites are pretty much the old web: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol)

Both in terms of comprehensiveness and in terms of functionality.

Re: A new spam policy for “back button hijacking”

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When a user clicks the "back" button in the browser, they have a clear expectation: they want to return to the previous page. Back button hijacking breaks this fundamental expectation. It seems pretty stupid. Instead of expanding the SEO policy bureaucracy to address a situation where a spammer hijacks the back button, the browser should have been designed in the first place to never allow that hijacking to happen.…

What about all the very legitimate uses of programmatically adding history entries?

Please explain the legitimate uses. Not once I have ever encountered a website that does something useful by modifying the behavior of my browsing history.

Re: A new spam policy for “back button hijacking”

#58
post #51

Now do paywalls next.

How would you recommend that creators of valuable content get paid?

Ideally, when I create valuable content I am paid and when I consume valuable content I don't pay. Advertising does this but I hate it so I don't want that. So ideally, there is no way to extract value from me but I am able to extract value from others. I think I would support someone who finds a way to enforce this.

But I am also willing to pay for valuable content an exorbitant amount if it is valuable enough. For instance, for absolutely critical information I might pay 0.79€ a month.

Re: A new spam policy for “back button hijacking”

#59
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that in single-page applications, it can work intuitively instead of always taking you all the way out of the app.

If the navigation simulates what would happen if we follow links to SPA#pos1, SPA#pos2, etc so that if I do two clicks within the SPA, and then hit Back three times I'm back to whatever link I followed to get to the SPA, I guess it's OK and follows user expectations. But if it is used as an excuse to trap the user in the SPA unless they kill the tab, not OK.

From the browsers perspective those are the same thing though. It’s a paradigm boundary.

The real answer is to have desktop applications that work like applications (buttons do what feels right), and websites that work like websites.

SPA, is a page application. Pages aren’t applications, applications aren’t pages. AutoCAD is an app, the Robotech Encyclopedia is content.

Re: A new spam policy for “back button hijacking”

#60

Some Microsoft sites have been very guilty of this. They are the ones that stick in my head in recent memory.

IIRC the Azure “portal” does this. Also likes to not record things as navigation events that really feel like they should be. Hitting back on that thing is like hitting the back button on Android, it’s the “I feel lucky” button. Anything could happen.

I think that is because some "pages" are really full screen modals. So the back button does take you back to the previous page, but it looks like you went back two pages (closes modal + goes back). I don't spend too much time in the Azure portal but this behavior is rampant in the Entra admin center.
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