Annoying "feature" for Opera users
Thread poster: Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 13:27
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
Oct 23, 2009

G'day everyone

I use Opera as my web browser because it remembers text input even if I use my backbutton. While I'm writing a forum post, I might want to check something on the previous page (eg what country the OP is from), so I hit the backbutton, read the information, hit the forward button, and continue typing where I have left off. Opera remembers what I have typed up to that point. But, for this to work, Opera must not reload the page when I hit the backbutton, and it must
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G'day everyone

I use Opera as my web browser because it remembers text input even if I use my backbutton. While I'm writing a forum post, I might want to check something on the previous page (eg what country the OP is from), so I hit the backbutton, read the information, hit the forward button, and continue typing where I have left off. Opera remembers what I have typed up to that point. But, for this to work, Opera must not reload the page when I hit the backbutton, and it must not reload the page when I hit the forward button. I can set these settings in Opera, but it is possible for webmaster to override it using JavaScript and cookies.

This what ProZ.com has now done, it seems, using a combination of JavaScript and cookies.

Opera always reload the page when I hit the back button while I'm writing a reply in the forums. This appears to be done using JavaScript, because I can avoid this ProZ.com behaviour by disabling JavasScript. Why is this necessary? Anyway, disabling JavaScript is not enough, because it doesn't solve the next problem.

When I'm on the previous page, and I hit the forward button, Opera reloads the page that I've been writing my reply on, which means that everything I've written up to that point, is gone! This appears to be done using a cookie. I can partially avoid this ProZ.com behaviour by deleting that cookie before I hit the forward button, but that cookie contains my login information also, so before I can hit "Post topic" I have to log in again. This is ridiculous!

Why does ProZ.com insist on reloading the page that contains the reply that I'm busy writing, if I used the back button and forward button?

There are some of us who carefully check out replies before we hit "Post topic", but if ProZ.com makes it impossible to back and forth before sending the reply, I'm afraid I'm going to have to become one of those users who post a reply and *afterwards* check my facts.

So please, let us Opera users use our back and forward buttons the way we're used to using them everywhere else on the web.

Thanks
Samuel

PS: Let me add that I log in using the non-secured login. While I wrote the above post, I deleted the PHPSESSID cookie (so that I can use the back button safely), which caused me to be logged out, then I logged back in again (in a separate tab), and then I hit "Post topic" and it posted without any problems. And now that I edit the post, I can safely use the back and forward button (because JavaScript is disabled) even though the cookie is still there. But I could not do that while I was writing the reply.



[Edited at 2009-10-23 10:56 GMT]
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Mikhail Kropotov
Mikhail Kropotov  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 13:27
English to Russian
+ ...
Simple solution Oct 23, 2009

When I'm entering text into a webpage text box or an IM chat window, I copy the text once in a while with Ctrl+C. It's a lot safer that way.

 
Dragomir Kovacevic
Dragomir Kovacevic  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 13:27
Italian to Serbian
+ ...
changing Opera identification into... Oct 23, 2009

...IE, for example. Or, Firefox.

just a hint, I don't know whether it works, like once it did. I do not modify this setting, since I want more Opera identifying presence in the Web.


 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 13:27
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Not really a solution Oct 23, 2009

Mikhail Kropotov wrote:
When I'm entering text into a webpage text box or an IM chat window, I copy the text once in a while with Ctrl+C. It's a lot safer that way.


True, but that isn't really a solution. I can use the back and forward buttons safely on a number of other forums, so why not ProZ.com? I've heard about people who type their replies in Notepad or suchlike, because it is "safer", but I wonder if those people use Opera. I know that other browsers with lesser history and cache capabilities do tend to lose typed content across back-and-forward actions, so for such users it may be a good idea to use Notepad or similar.


 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 13:27
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
@Dragomir Oct 23, 2009

Dragomir Kovacevic wrote:
Changing Opera identification into IE, for example. Or, Firefox.


Thanks. Either identifying or masking as Firefox (and having JavaScript enabled) seems to solve the forward-button problem, which was the main problem. It still doesn't solve the back-button problem. Opera still reloads the page when I hit the back-button, but thankfully it appears to remember the form content when I hit the forward button (it also goes forward instantaneously, as it should).

So... if I set my browser to identify itself as itself, then its normal functionality doesn't work on ProZ.com, but if I set it to identify itself as Firefox, then its normal functionality (or at least part of it) does work.


 
Dragomir Kovacevic
Dragomir Kovacevic  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 13:27
Italian to Serbian
+ ...
higher cache Oct 23, 2009

Samuel Murray wrote:
I know that other browsers with lesser history and cache capabilities do tend to lose typed content across back-and-forward actions,


also, here might be the point. Opera remembers so much of the text, history, but if just 5 Mb-s for cache are left as per default, then the risk of re-loading of pages is more than relevant.


 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 13:27
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
@Dragomir Oct 23, 2009

Dragomir Kovacevic wrote:
Also, here might be the point. Opera remembers so much of the text, history, but if just 5 Mb-s for cache are left as per default, then the risk of re-loading of pages is more than relevant.


True. But my browser cache size limit is 400 MB. And my "Check updates" field in History is set at 5 minutes (so if the page is less than 5 minutes old, it should not check for updates but simply display it straight from the cache).


 
Andreas Nieckele
Andreas Nieckele  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 09:27
English to Portuguese
Lazarus Oct 23, 2009

Samuel Murray wrote:

I use Opera as my web browser because it remembers text input even if I use my backbutton.


Hello Samuel. You may already know about this and you probably don't want to change browsers, but there is a Firefox extension called Lazarus that does exactly what you mention. "Never lose anything you type into a web form again! Lazarus securely auto-saves all forms as you type, so after a crash, server timeout, or whatever, you can go back to the form, right click, "recover form", and breathe a sigh of relief."

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6984


 


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Annoying "feature" for Opera users






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