Forum behavior - navigating between forum and topics

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David Voss Posted: Thu, Sep 13 2007 10:40 AM

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I was asked a question regarding navigating between the forum and topics pages.    

Using the forums is such a pain because after I have viewed a message and click my browser's back button (Firefox), I am returned to the top of the previous screen, rather than the spot I had scrolled down to.

It makes it necessary to remember the name of the message I had just read, and I have to scroll down to that spot each time.  Not a problem, I guess, if I am near the top of the listing of messages.  However, if I am reading a bunch of messages, I soon get frustrated after doing this a few times.

I have never had this problem with any other website.  I am always returned to the spot I had scrolled down to when I go "back".

I understand what this person is describing, I'm just not sure why the behavior changes in CS vs. other forums / webpages.  Does it have anything to do with cache settings or something?

You can try it out yourself, if you visit any of the forums here on the CS site, go to any forum and scroll down the list of topics, click a topic, then hit your browser's back button.  You'll be returned to the top of the page.

If you go to another site, say vBulletin as an example, you'll be returned to the spot on the page you were at.

I've never noticed this myself because I go down the list of topics and open threads in new tabs.  However I can see where this would be extremely annoying.