So, this problem has been well documented across the web and on these forums, but I am still looking for a fix. On multiple websites, when I click on the back button, it just lands me on the same page I've been viewing. After browsing the page, in order to go back to the previous page, I have to double click or even triple click at times in order to back out of the page. Clicking the back button once just seems to refresh the page I'm on. This is getting more annoying every time I am using a search engine (both Google and Bing) and surfing through several different pages, as it's beginning to happen quite often. People are also seeing doubleclick.ads being inserted as "extra" links into their back button's history as well. So, is this an IE problem or a GoogleAds problem. Since Firefox does not seem to have this issue, it could indicate that IE isn't keeping up with their coding and stopping events like this from happening. Or, it could mean that these ads and redirects are occurring because Google and other ad makers are using bad code and the people at Firefox have figured out how to thwart it. Either way, Microsoft should do the same-put out a fix for this nuisance or end up losing IE users.
One example is:
From Google search page, typing in "best autobiographies"
Scrolling down and selecting the goodreads.com site from the results
After spending about a minute on the page, clicking the back button once just lands me back on the goodreads.com page
Double-clicking will take me back to search results page
A second example:
Here's a screen shot of what occurred on the abcnews website. At first glance, the URL history is normal and I can go back to the previous page, but after being on the page for about 30 seconds or so, that link gets inserted so that then I am forced to double-click to go back to my previous page.
(screenshot avail at the microsoft bug site)
My attempts to fix:
I have reset IE, I even used Microsoft's IE Fix tool, I tried putting doubleclick.ads link into my restricted sites, I disabled scripting, I enabled 3rd party, I scanned for viruses and did registry fixes, scanned for adware and malware, updated my tracking protection lists for IE, don't have any add-ons, and more. To no avail. Still happening on both my pc's, one has IE9 and the other has IE10.
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I too experience this problem on a REGULAR basis. It's annoying and began happening to me as soon as I was forcibly (thank you M$) upgraded to IE 10. (Running on w7 64). Go to almost any web site, decide to 'go back' and hit the back button, end up on the exact same page I was on. Hit it again, back again. Only if I time it well and hit the back button 2-3 times quickly will I get truly returned back to where I wanted to be. And - if I hit the back button too many times I end up 2 pages back which is SO annoying.
As posted by twinkly1974 I too can see that my back button 'history' list many times shows a long list of ad site names that mean that I could be sitting there hitting the back button forever.
My suggestion - absolutely prevent the history list from being modified by anyone other than IE, thus allowing it to be used solely for the purpose it was (supposedly) designed for - going back!
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Here's someone's explanation of the problem in more technical terms:
"In Internet Explorer, when a page is loaded, the address of the prior page is added to the history stack. However, IE is also pushing the current page url to the history stack for every Google Ad that is loaded. So when the back button is pressed, it attempts to go back to the prior page, which is the same as the current page and nothing appears to happen. However, if you press the button enough times and all of the extra instances of the current page have been removed from the stack, the browser will finally go back to the previous page."
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EXCERPT FROM A FORUM:
User1-
Steps to reproduce the problem:
1. Open attached testcases and select a link from that page
2. Right-click the "Back" button
What is the expected behavior? To get back to the previous page.
What is the actual result? Ten history entries are inserted into history. Going back makes the frames with errors show up blank instead of actually going to the previous page.
Did this work before? N/A
The testcase is the result of the investigation: whenever a frame is added after the page finishes loading and that frame fails to load a new history entry is created. This tends to be very confusing because often these frames aren't even visible. Why the frame fails to load doesn't matter, the internal redirect to the error page is apparently causing the history entry to be added. I think that this internal redirect should not be affecting a user's history and should be fixed.
User 2-
I have found the root cause of the issue. In didStartProvisionalLoad we have:
if (frame->parent()->isLoading()) {
// Take note of AUTO_SUBFRAME loads here, so that we can know how to
// load an error page. See didFailProvisionalLoad.
document_state->navigation_state()->set_transition_type(
PAGE_TRANSITION_AUTO_SUBFRAME);
}
This results in transition_type_ of content:
AGE_TRANSITION_LINK if the parent page is no longer loading. In this case, the parent page has already loaded and we are inserting iframes using JavaScript, so the transition_type_ stays unchanged.
If the load fails, we enter didFailProvisionalLoad, which in turn does:
bool replace =
navigation_state->pending_page_id() != -1 ||
navigation_state->transition_type() ==
PAGE_TRANSITION_AUTO_SUBFRAME;
Since transition_type is PAGE_TRANSITION_LINK due to the logic in didStartProvisionalLoad, we end up with replace being false. This then causes us to load the error page as a new history item instead of replacing the current one.
User 3-
So let me get this straight. An ad company isn't fixing a bug in their code that causes undesirable behavior when an ad blocking is used. Shocking.
Bug is very annoying - if page manages to fully load before "Back" button or shortcut is triggered again, it becomes impossible to leave the page without opening history menu for current tab. For pages with dynamic frame loading this efficiently means corruption of tab history before you even notice the problem.
User 2-
Initial iframe load shouldn't add session history item. We are fixing the behavior of setReplacesCurrentHistoryItem for initial frame navigation.
Fixing initial erroneous navigation in iframe to not add history entry. The underlying issue is that AUTO_SUBFRAME transition type was incorrectly being set on subframe navigations. I'm fixing this to be compliant with the HTML5 spec.
User 4-
Seeing this issue also. Behavior is page dependent and consistent. For example:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/01/world/meast/syria-civil-war/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
will cause multiple history entries for the page and "back button" will not work.
while:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/30/world/americas/crucified-bus-drivers-paraguay/index.html?hpt=hp_t3
causes only a single history entry and "back button" still works.
This behavior is identical on every retry.
User 5-
Been having the problem for a while now, just got frustrated enough to do some searching. Most apparent for me at Amazon.com - terrible behavior when browsing products.
User 6-
Being blasted with ads isn't favorable and neither is having to hit the back button X number of times to actually go back. I'm not one to spam up pages with "fixitfixitfixitplzplzplz", but as others have said, this should really be a P1/blocking bug. It seems the root cause was discovered, so what's the problem here?
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Here is the solution of one website owner:
" meshane Aug 31, 2012 11:06 AM
I have some good news to report. Sorry to change directions again on the suspected cause, but as I said this is a complex issue and there have been a number of people looking into this since early July. Ultimately, it comes down to some ads exposing a bug in Internet Explorer. We were able to track the cause of this down to a 3rd party ad network, and found a particular ad that was causing this. We have now blocked this ad, but we do suspect that more than one ad is causing this behavior which is part of why it's been hard to track down. We will continue to try to root out the cause of the problem and remove any ads which trigger the bug. If you encounter this again, please continue to let us know, and screen captures of ALL the ads on the page at the time are always helpful.
I know that ads can be an annoyance but they are what keeps chowhound's doors open. We will continue to do our best to keep disruptive ads from reaching the chowhound community.
- Shane"
(cited~
www.chowhound.chow.com/topics)
SOOOO, is our only hope to complain to individual site owners? If they lose viewers, they lose revenue (and how ironic over an ad issue which generates revenue for them). This issue has been happening for years & still no fix from Microsoft. If Firefox can get it right, I'm not sure why IE (the most used browser in the world by both households AND businesses) can't at least steer us in the right direction, if not update IE with a fix!
