[tech] Client history behavior with redirects

[Frank Jüdes]

Hi Michael,

first thing is that every gemini-site should avoid to put the user into 
a situation where the "back" button is the only way out, by providing 
arbitrary links.

And i agree with you, option "c" looks like what i would expect to see 
when clicking on the "back" button.

Another option is to give the end-user the choice of where back in the 
history to go, like if you right-click on the "back" button in the 
chromium browser.

Best regards from Charleston (WV),
      Frank/2

On 2021-05-17 12:49, Michael Lazar wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I have a question on a common design pattern in gemini. Say we have
> a guestbook, message board, etc. that accepts user comments via an
> input query. A normal session with a client might look like this:
>
> ```
> C: /
> S: 20 text/gemini (display the home page)
>
> C: /guestbook
> S: 20 text/gemini (display the guestbook page)
>
> C: /guestbook/input
> S: 10 enter your message
>
> C: /guestbook/input?hello%20world
> S: 30 /guestbook (submit the user's message and redirect)
>
> C: /guestbook
> S: 20 text/gemini (display the guestbook page)
> ```
>
> Now, what should happen at this point when the user clicks the
> "back" button in their client?
>
> A. The client resubmits "/guestbook/input?hello%20world". This is not
>     desired because it will result in double posting the message. This
>     same problem is solved on the web using the Post/Redirect/Get
>     pattern [1]. I suppose the gemini equivalent would be "don't store
>     requests that return 3x in the client's history". With this rule,
>     queries like GUS searches would still be cached because
>     "gemini://geminispace.info/search?hello" returns a 20 response.
>
> B. The client re-prompts the user with "enter your message". I've
>     seen a few (most?) clients do this and it's a pretty jarring
>     experience as a user, because I did not click on a link first
>     to prime the input prompt. IMO we should also make a rule "don't
>     store requests that return a 1x in the client's history". There's
>     no web equivalent for this that I could find.
>
> C. The client loads "/", which is the latest cached request before
>     the current page. This seems like the desired behavior to me.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> - Michael
>
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post/Redirect/Get
-- 
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