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[Dietrich Sider]

Hi Ernie

Using the back button on my browser on these forums always takes me to the -top- of the previous page, rather than to wherever I scrolled down to, as is normal with any other page I've ever surfed.

This is an issue because of the way I like to surf forums. I use the tree view, scroll down slowly until I find a topic that interests me, then -back- out again when I'm done, leaving me at the top of that long list of topics I just passed over.

I've taken to using the next topic and previous topic links at the bottom of each post, but those don't always work correctly either - they get screwed up when a post gets moved to a different forum.

I'm not sure what can be done about it, but it would be nice if one of those two things could be fixed.

Thanks

Dietrich

[Mac Kerr]

I use Safari under Mac OSX 10.2.8, and the back button takes me back to the spot on the list where I last was. It may miss by a little if a now topic has been added at the top while I was reading. It does do this in 2 steps, where it takes me to the top first, then jumps down to where I was. Unfortunately it does not back out through my posting well.

Mac

[Dietrich Sider]

I'm using Firefox in W2K.

It works properly in Internet Explorer, but I refuse to use IE any longer for security reasons (No adware, spyware, pop-ups, or dialer installs in 3 months of using Firefox!)

I didn't suspect the browser since I had never had any compatibility problems with Firefox thus far, and to my knowledge it is fully W3C compliant (which IE isn't as well).

This may be something I have to live with as a consequence of having a safer browser, but it would be nice if someone could check it out. . .

[Ernie Black]

There seems to be an issue with how Firefox targets the back button. Traditionally, the back button takes you back to the previous link focus (e.g., a topic link 2/3 of the way down a page), but Firefox doesn't exhibit this behavior, or at least not consistently. Here's a thread on another board about the same issue: http://www.wilderssecurity.com/archive/index.php/t-27844.htm l. Note that the board software is different to ours; we're running FUDforum 2.6.2, and they're running vBulletin v3.0.3, but people are reporting the same behavior you are.

Here's one reviewer's comment:

Quote:

One nagging annoyance of Firefox: When you are on a lengthy page of links (for instance, the A-Section of the local paper), and you click a link to read it, then come back to the initial page, you are at the top of the page again. In IE, when you scrolled halfway down the page, then clicked a link and came back, you were positioned halfway down the page. The strange thing is that I could swear this has worked on some sites. Perhaps I'm missing something simple, but it would be nice if this could work as IE did (did I really say that?).

For full text, see http://jayseae.cxliv.org/2004/03/04/revisiting_the_browser.h tml.

FF is an outstanding browser, btw--I plan to download the newly released v 1.0 soon. In many ways a superior browser to IE, Netscape 7.x, or Opera on the PC. I don't know about the Mac; I just run IE 5.2 on my Mac OS X -- needs to be upgraded.

[Dietrich Sider]

Exactly! It works on every other site I frequent, just not this one. Perhaps it has something to do with the dynamic content generation. I might try playing with the settings for when it checks for newer versions of cached pages. (If I can find the settings)

[Ernie Black]

I'm not familiar enough with FF to guess what's causing it, but whatever the cause, it's in the category of "known bugs" (whether Mozilla or FF consider it a bug, I don't know) with the FF browser since it's not limited to our site or software but is evident on other sites running other software. Perhaps it has something to do with how FF caches dynamically generated pages, which in effect is a good thing if it's refreshing the page each time so that you don't miss newer content, but which can also be annoying. Let me know what you discover. I think FF is going to easily become the new Mozilla standard and will erode IE's dominance (though I also suspect that IE--or whatever M$ replaces it with in Longhorn two years or more from now--will retain at least a 75-80% market dominance on the PC.

[Mac Kerr]

Ernie wrote on Wed, 10 November 2004 08:50

FF is an outstanding browser, btw--I plan to download the newly released v 1.0 soon. In many ways a superior browser to IE, Netscape 7.x, or Opera on the PC. I don't know about the Mac; I just run IE 5.2 on my Mac OS X -- needs to be upgraded.

You should at least try Safari on OSX. I find it much faster, and more flexible than IE, however there are some sites that don't work well. TVGuide.com is one, and I keep IE in my dock just to get TV listings.

Mac

[Ernie Black]

Good idea. I've got to do some upgrading for my Mac anyway; it's OS X, but pretty early generation, so it needs updating. I like it, but I do all my development on a far more powerful PC (not that I love Windoze, just that I've got the horsepower and the programs on the PC), so I don't use the Mac that much. Mostly for cross-platform testing.

[Dave Stevens]

I primarily use Camino and sometimes Firefox.  Rarely Safari and never IE.  

Dave

[Ernie Black]

I'll have to look into Camino. From what I've read, it's the latest, possibly the best implementation of Mozilla on the Mac, right? From what I've seen so far, Firefox may be the best browser on Windoze. I love the tab feature and the Gecko layout engine seems to be pretty solid, possibly the best implementation of CSS yet--much better than Netscape, which I think is bloated. I suspect I'll still have to rely on IE on a Windoze box as the base browser simply because it owns the market--even here, where there's a significant minority browsing with Mozilla browsers and Macs. Our logs show a steady increase in non-IE browsers in recent history. For the SR Forums in particular, in 2004 to date (April to Nov) IE accounts for 79% of users, with Mozilla at 10.5%, Safari at 5%, and Netscape at 3.5%, but from September 1 to date, IE has dropped to 76.5% and Mozilla has climbed to 13.4%, with Safari and Netscape holding steady. So IE still has the lion's share by far, but it is slipping.

This also indicates an increased presence of Mozilla on PCs, not just Macs, because from Sept to now, Windoze has a 91.36% share and Macs 7.73% (Linux is third with only 0.75%). For 2004 to date it's pretty close, with Windoze at 90.98% and Mac at 7.78%. This indicates an increasing share of Mozilla browsers but not of Mac users.