Why does Firefox prevent 'Back Arrow' working on certain sites?
I am running Firefox 37.0.1, and have recently started to experience a problem with one of my regularly visited websites (www.freebmd.org.uk).
On this site, after doing a search, one can left-click 'back arrow', modify search parameters and submit another search. This works fine on both Internet Explorer on my PC & Safari on my iPad, but it no longer works on Firefox!
Whenever I try to back-arrow, I am told by Firefox that "Document has expired... " and I have to resort to the 'Try Again' button, followed by the 'Confirm' button, not exactly life threatening but annoying!
I assum that some setting in Firefox has recently changed following an update that is the cause of the problem.
Any ideas for a cure would be welcome
Mike
Alle svar (5)
You can get a "document has expired" message if you use the back button or a bookmark to go back to a specific page and the web site has instructed Firefox not to cache the page. Firefox tries to retrieve the page from the server, possibly by sending POST data that is no longer valid. In such a case best is to open links from such a page in a new tab/window by middle-clicking a link to avoid using the Back button, but instead close the tab to return to the previous tab.
Cor-el, As the original post stated, this is not a web-site problem, as both IE and Safari work fine on this site.
To re-state, why does Firefox not allow me go go back, when other browsers do?
This has only recently started to happen, so what has changed in Firefox to cause this?
Mike
Each browser uses its own conventions with how to proceed with caching data and what to do when you use the Back button. If the website instructs the browser not to cache the page then Firefox doesn't do that. If you would use the Back button in such a case then Firefox will send the original request that was used previously to retrieve that page another time. If the server doesn't like this request then it responds with a document has expired response. Other browsers may store a copy of the page in the cache all the time to be able to restore all pages that are in the tab history, but Firefox doesn't do that.
Cor-El,
I'll say it again, what has Firefox changed recently to prevent the back-button working?
It used to work fine, even with Firefox, but something has changed in Firefox. I'm trying to discover what.
Mike
I don't know whether this has changed in Firefox. It is more likely that the website has changed this and is now sending other cache or no-pragma headers via the HTTP response headers.
You can use the Live Http Headers extension to check the response headers.