"back" broken?

[Handycam]

For some reason, on my G5 Quad the "back" button is not working on most sites. Although it seems to be working on this site, on other sites I visit regularly it does not: Macintouch.com, nytimes.com, cnn.com, etc.

I click the "back" arrow or hit "backspace" and nothing happens.

Any ideas?

I was using SP9 at home on my G4 Powerbook last night all evening and had no such problem.

[Handycam]

I cleared my history, now it works. Perhaps the history file was corrupted.

[JKT]

Its a known issue - to workaround it, click the little black arrow on the back button and pick the site from the Back history.

[Handycam]

Actually, in many cases, the page I'm currently on is listed like a dozen times on the "back" menu you describe. That can't be good.

[Rachael]

Ack, quick reply ate mine! Righto, take 2.

Handycam, which sites are you seeing that behavior on, and which Sneaky Peek are you running? We recently (sp 9 or 10, maybe?) fixed an issue with redundant history items, so you may be seeing something that's fixed in a later SP...

[Handycam]

I just got it to happen on http://www.gizmodo.com

I clicked on the first story "read more", back didn't work and my menu looks like the attached:

http://stevelombardi.com/ow/history.png

[Handycam]

sorry, this is with sp10. OSX 10.4.6. G5 Quad.

[Forrest]

No issues here on that site. sp10, 10.4.6.

[Handycam]

don't know what to say. happens here often. different sites, not all the time.

[Forrest]

If you find more examples, post them and I'll test them.

[Handycam]

Try http://www.defamer.com

Click on any internal link (like one of the "read more"). History vanishes completely.

[Handycam]

Oh, then I tried quitting OW and trying it again. I get:

http://stevelombardi.com/ow/defamer.png

[Forrest]

Are you rejecting all cookies?

[Handycam]

I'm accepting cookies only from the current site.

[Handycam]

I just tried it with "accept cookies" and got the same result.

[Handycam]

Happened to me just now on Monster.com

See this (http://stevelombardi.com/ow/monster.png)

[Forrest]

Ok, so I had to click around some more and it's doing the same thing to me as well. If I disable ad blocking, the issue goes away. Is that the case for you too?

[Handycam]

yes, i can confirm that.

[Forrest]

Sounds like we've confirmed the same bug still exists.

[Rachael]

so the trick is a "accept cookies only from the current site", to reproduce it? With this kind of thing the most helpful thing you can do (besides reporting the bugs themselves) is to make a nice clear list of steps to reproduce. something like:
1 - navigate to foo.com
2 - select the 'bar' link
3 - watch the crash!

[Forrest]

so the trick is a "accept cookies only from the current site"

No. I thought that's what it was, but cookies didn't have much to do with it.

1. Go to http://www.defamer.com/
2. In the site prefs, select to block images/content From blocked URLs
3. Click on links to surf within the site (eg, top stories.)

After traveling to a few pages, you should see a list of duplicate pages in the history.

[rorya]

Yeah, I too notice the same problem with the back button not working properly. Actually in my experience it doesn't work most of the time. For example I just noticed it on Yahoo!'s tv listing site: http://tv.yahoo.com/

Also there seems to be an issue with pages that either don't specify a title (in which case OW should just use the URL) or non-HTML documents (again, URL should be used) and OW decides to give the window a title of "OmniWeb"

I am using the latest, 5.5 sp10, BTW, on a Quad G5 on an NFS network account ( ~ is in /Network/Users)

-rory

[philonous]

I see this also with many, many different pages. FWIW, i just experienced it with Yahoo!'s new home page, after emulating FF1.5.

P

[Len Case]

Please don't report the title problem in a thread about the back button--they are not related and you want us to fix both problems, right?

[peterb]

In the site prefs, select to block images/content From blocked URLs

After traveling to a few pages, you should see a list of duplicate pages in the history.

Thanks for figuring out what causes this bug! It was making OW 5.5 almost unbearable for daily use. I've temporarily unchecked this setting until this bug is fixed.

-peter

[Handycam]

FWIW, this is still broken in SP11. But you probably already knew that.

[Forrest]

I think it's a safe bet that if they didn't put it in the release notes as "fixed" it hasn't been fixed.

[sachiwilson]

Ah! I see this is actually a known problem. I should have dug further. It is still happening, I'm sorry to say.

[mk2]

Indeed, this behavior seems to have regressed in SP12 for some of the sites I visit. http://www.post-gazette.com/ is a particularly bad one under SP12; just click a link to any story on their site with "blocked urls" ad blocking enabled, and watch the history entries pile up.

If other folks can't replicate this behavior let me know and I'll figure out which ad-blocking regexp is filtering the post-gazette's ads.

-Mike

[Len Case]

You will all be happy to hear that I tracked this one down today and fixed it for the next release (I hope).

[Handycam]

Way to go! This goes a long way to making this usable as an everyday browser. Looking forward to SP13 -- any day now?

[mk2]

Woohoo! SP13 and http://www.post-gazette.com seem to be getting along famously now. Thanks Len!

[Handycam]

Yes, indeedy! Even defamer.com, which did it every time, is working now. Great work, Len!

[bethkatz17582]

I still have an instance where it won't go back with sp14. On the bright side, about.com seems to be working for me now.

I'll write up a better bug report to send directly. Suppose I am in a Yahoo group, blocking all ads (it works correctly if ads are allowed), and I click on a person's user name to bring up their profile. If I block the ads, I get a message on the page that says:
Cannot Load Address
Stopped loading <http://usadserver.yahoo.com/a?
f=150000389&p=usprofiles&l=LREC&c=sh>: can’t find host
And I can't press the back button and go back. I have to go down one further spot in the back button's history.

The back button works correctly if I am showing ads and do the same thing on a different person.

[Handycam]

Yahoo is tricky with their ads. I tried to quash them all and got a similar error. I wound up using CSS to whack the ads.

Here's the site CSS I use:



/* personals, soapcity ad (forms) */
form[action^="http://rd.yahoo.com/"],
form[action^="http://us.ard.yahoo.com/"],
form[action=""][name$="SoapCity"],
form[action=""][name^="728x90"],
form[action=""][name^="300x250"] { display: none !important }

/* text banner */
div#ymadbn { display: none !important }

/* mail: logout page page */
body[bgcolor="#ffffff"] tr[bgcolor="#eeeeee"] td[align="center"][valign="top"] p table[bgcolor="#cadaf8"][width="250"][cellpadding="4"] tbody { display: none !important }



/* "Sponsored Matches" at the bottom */
body[bgcolor="#ffffff"] center p table[width="750"] td[width="540"][valign="top"] table[width="100%"][cellpadding="2"] td[valign="top"] table[width="100%"][cellpadding="1"][bgcolor="#999999"] { display: none !important }

/* yahoo search - sponsored results: updated */
div#yschres div.yschspns { display: none !important }

/* yahoo directory - sponsored results */
div.ydirspns { display: none !important }

/* floating iframe survey prompt */
div#yad_win { display: none !important }



/* sponsored results */
body div#results div[class="st sr"]:first-child,
body div#results ul.ovr, body div#east { display: none !important }

/* ads above grid */
body > center > p { display: none !important }

/* grid ads */
div#ytvMainBody > div.grid_cont ul.grid#oGrid li.adRow {
display: none !important
}

/* ads above programming info */
body > center > p { display: none !important }

/* programming info ad and sponsored links */
div.tabs div.adContainer,
div.tabs div.tabContainer div#masterdiv { display: none !important }

[bethkatz17582]

Thank you for the CSS. Where would I put that?
I don't care whether or not I see the error text. I just want the back button to work without my having to do anything special.

[Handycam]

First remove any AdBlock prefs related to yahoo. That will fix any "back" errors (I don't get any).

Then save what I posted as something like "yahoo.css" (name unimportant) anywhere you like. Then, while viewing Yahoo.com, open up "site preferences" (under the omniweb menu). On the "page appearance" tab, use the "style sheet" popup menu, choose "custom" and then browse to the CSS file you saved earlier.

Refresh the page, and poof! Ads gone.