Develop Reference

Browser back button and javascript

It's possible to show some message on the page when you set mouse cursor on the browser back button? I don't want to use window.onbeforeunload, because it's irritating. I use ajax and I want to inform users that if they want to go back to the previous page on my web portal they should use a different button.
Is it possible to do it?
Thanks for your help

It is not possible to handle the mouse moving on the browser buttons, these are not part of the DOM that your scripts can handle.
There is an answer available here, which proposes a way of preventing users going back through the browser's back button.

Hijack Back Button? [duplicate]

I am trying a new functionality for my web site. I want to do simple navigation by hiding/showing <div> elements.
For example, when a user clicks a "details" button on some product, I want to hide the main <div> and show the <div> containing the details for the product.
The problem is that to go back to the previous "page", I have to undo all the display/visibility style changes, which is ok if the user clicks the "close" button in the newly opened <div>. But most users will hit the BACK button.
Is there a way to make the BACK button go back to the previous "state" of the page i.e., undo the visibility/display changes?
Thanks.

Yes. What you're looking for is called AJAX browser history.
There are a few open implementations out there, like RSH as well as plugins/modules for frameworks like jQuery and YUI.

to answer the question of your title (that's what I was looking for)
Using the BACK button to revert to the previous state of the page
and from the link from #reach4thelasers's answer, you have to set up a timer and check again and again the current anchor:
//On load page, init the timer which check if the there are anchor changes each 300 ms
$().ready(function(){
setInterval("checkAnchor()", 300);
});
because there's no Javascript callback triggered when the BACK button is pressed and only the anchor is changed ...
--
by the way, the pattern you're talking about is now known as Single Page Interface !

You need to add an anchor to the URL whenever a change is made
www.site.com/page.html#anchor1
This will allow the browser to maintain the pages in its history. I implemented it in my current site after following this tutorial, which works great and gives you a good understanding of what you need to do:
http://yensdesign.com/2008/11/creating-ajax-websites-based-on-anchor-navigation/
Your example in the comments won't work, because it works like this:
Page Loaded
Page Changed, Add Anchor to URL (back button takes you back to back to 1)
Page Changed, Anchor Changed (back button button takes you back to 2)
Page Changed, Anchor Changed (back button button takes you back to 3)
.... and so on and so on..

If there is, it sounds like a pretty evil thing to do from a UX perspective. Why don't you design a "back" button into your application, and use design to make it obvious to the user that they should use your application's back button instead of the browser.
By "use design," I mean make your application look like a self-sufficient user interface inside of the browser, so the user's eye stays within your page, and not up on the browser chrome, when they are looking for controls to interact with your app.

You can do this with anchors, which is how it's done in a lot of flash applications, or other apps that don't go from page to page. Facebook uses this technique pretty liberally. Each time the user clicks on a link that should go in their history, change the anchor on the page.
So say my home page link is:
http://www.mysite.com/#homepage
For the link that works your javascript magic, do this:
My Other Page
This will send the user to http://www.mysite.com/#otherpage where clicking the back button will go back to http://www.mysite.com/#homepage. Then you just have to read the anchors with
window.location.hash
to figure out which page you're supposed to be on.

Take a look to this tutorial based on ItsNat a Java web framework focused on Single Page Interface web sites

History Sensitive Back Button

Is it possible to have a button on a webpage that will be named 'Back' and do window.history.back() if the user has navigated to the page from another page on your website and otherwise have some other title and be a direct link if the user navigated to your page from another website or went to the page directly.
Google plus on mobile seems to have this behaviour. When you click on a post in your stream then it has a 'back' button on the post page. However, if you go to the post page directly then it has a 'stream' button on the post page.
This seems tricky to implement because you don't have access to the urls in window.history.

Have you any chance of adding an ext lib like BBQ? It's a package used to manage the history behavior in your page.

I have done this before. You can do this with an anchor in the link. The anchor needs to have every get parameter of your application (i.e. application state) stored. Your application should be able to parse the anchor. To intercept the back button look here: stackoverflow.com/questions/136937/is-there-a-way-to-catch-the-back-button-event-in-javascript.

#benmmurphy I also had the same problem, then I used the following, which worked perfectly for me. You have to paste it on the page, from where you want to go back.
GO BACK
Hope this will help you.

Popup message when leaving page

I am looking to develop a small popup message which acts similar to the window.beforeunload function, to notify the user, that if they leave the current page, they will lose all of their data.
However the issue with the beforeunload event is it fires to often.
I would like to have the popup message fire only when a user closes the page, or clicks a link which takes them away from the current page, to ensure they are aware that their current action will result in the loss of the form data they have entered so far.
However beforeunload event goes further to fire when they refresh the page, which is not needed for this case, and also when the forum is submitted.
Could anyone advise me on the best way to develop this. I thought about using a basic confirm dialog and have it fire under the right circumstances, however is it possible to know if the user is refreshing the page, and if the forum is being submitted (without jQuery).
How can I have this dialog fire at the appropriate times?

Unfortunately, I don't think this is possible. The page unload events are very limited, for security reasons.

If you only want it to appear if the user added or changed formdata, why not check for changes in the data? If yes then return the question on beforeunload, if not do nothing.

Assuming that the form isn't too complicated, you could save form data by using Ajax call, which means there will not be a page reload. So, beforeunload will then behave as it was designed to.

Javascript: detect when page has been navigated "back" to

Suppose I have a page open in a browser and I go to my address bar and enter another page. Then I hit the back button to go to my original page. I'd like to write some Javascript code that can detect this scenario and respond to it.
As best I can tell neither the ready event, the onload, nor any inline Javascript on the page itself is re-executed in this scenario. Is there anything else I can do?
Cross-browser support is important here. jQuery based solutions preferred but not required.
Edit for clarity: the navigation I'm assuming is Page A -> Page B -> back to page A where I'm assuming that Page B may or may not be under my control.

You should try to give the user a cookie on both pages, the navigated to page and the page itself, with dates and times and compare see if they're close, or if they show that he's been on one page, been on another, and then redirected.
Another option is to give the user a cookie when he is redirected

In Firefox, you can check for the DomContentLoaded event. For a cross-browser solution, a little more work is required:
http://dean.edwards.name/weblog/2005/09/busted/