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Comment by isatty | Hacker News Reader

Slashdot is breaking the browsers back button now, seriously?

HN should not allow urls that do this to be posted.

I was able to click on the link, and click back to return to these comments, in both FF and Chrome. What behavior are you seeing that's different?

I’m guessing you’ve ublock origin or similar on those browsers thats mitigating it. It’s broken on safari (iOS).

I tried again with brand new, blank profiles in Chrome and Firefox (default settings, no extensions) and still can't make it hijack the back button.

On iPhone Safari, after clicking the article link, I cannot navigate back to HN using the back button.

It's using whatever library stuffs an extra page in your history, "More stories to check out before you go!" in a blue banner at the top of the page. (iOS chrome)

I dub this pattern the "chum blast"

I was unable to go back on mobile Firefox. Going back would instantly redirect me back forwards.

Edit: Tested on desktop firefox, and it works fine there.

Firefox Android, it fills the back history in a loop. With a long press on the back button though I can then jump over the looping page. Back to HN.

> With a long press...

TIL.

Sigh... Fucking un-discoverable phone UI shit.

From the official Hacker News Guidelines:

"Please don't complain about website formatting, back-button breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be interesting."

UPDATE: Right now 43% of the comments on this story are about the site's back-button behavior.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That's a stupid rule. I'm glad for the warning, because now I know not to click it. Formatting is one thing, and I and see why griping about that is boring. "Caution Dark Patterns Ahead" is a useful warning.

Yeah, but this article is about SCO v IBM settling. The last quiet dying gasps of things that entertained and educated us 15-20 years ago and we barely realised still existed are kind of on-topic. Now I wonder what happened to kuro5hin.

> what happened to kuro5hin

Still around last I checked, a year or three ago.

Open links in new tabs to avoid this "problem" entirely.

Right click or long press the back button to go back more than one step at a time.

If you still have issues complain to your browser vendor, not HN or slashdot.

I can also restart my phone or buy a new one to avoid this problem entirely. I guess I’ll do that.

You know, if your browser is allowing for its back button to be hijacked, its right to blame browser rather than, people who use its API. What next block websites that track locations, send notifications? If your phone needs a restart, to close a website. I think you have bigger problems with that phone.

I recommend PinePhone.

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