Chrome browser putting a stop for websites from abusing the back button -

It does not matter what kind of browser we all use, we all seem to rely on that Back Button to get back to the previously visited web page. However, some of the websites on the internet are actually abusing this back button from preventing the visitors to leave their websites. It is indeed an annoying thing to experience on the internet but there is good news. Chromium-based browsers are soon going to put a stop to the abuse of the back button by websites.

According to tech media, chromium based browser’s open source which has led to the founding of Google Chrome and the upcoming Edge Browser, their developers are now introducing a new behavior in these browsers which will prevent the websites from breaking the functionality of the Back Button.

Ways to break the Back Button Functionality:-

There are actually two ways some websites use to break the functionality of Back Button.

First Method; Redirection:-

The first way they use is by making use of redirects by which these websites see a person load the first website and then automatically redistricts them to their intended website. When these websites use this way, and a person clicks on the Back Button, it simply loads the previous page once more and redirects them to the apogee they were intending to leave.

Second Method; History Manipulation:-

The second way is known as History Manipulation. Back Button works by relying on the user’s history of the previously visited page in order for it to know what page they visited previously. Some websites, with the help of HTML5, are able to add in multiple commands of “pushState” which inhibits the provisos page from loading. As these pushState commands can be stacked on top of each other, it is useless to go back to the previous page despite how many times the user clicks on the Back Button.

What Chromium is doing to stop this behavior:-

As for the step by Chromium-based browser in future, they are going to introduce something that will ignore anything added into the history which does not require “User Gesture”. With this new feature, both redirect and pushState commands are going to become obsolete for the websites that use this underhanded method.