Thinkpads Forum

One of the nice features of phpBB forums such as this one is that if you are in the middle of preparing a post, and hit 'back' (intentionally or accidentally), then 'forward' again, to go back to the reply page, the content entered in the reply form is saved. This works automatically, at least in Mozilla-based browsers, such as Firefox and Pale Moon, without any extensions installed.

I noticed a few days ago that this no longer works for me. If I hit back-forward, I am greeted with an empty post. I use Pale Moon 27.0.3, but I do not think it is a browser issue, since the same feature still works for me in other phpBB-based forums, such as VOGONS. The issue is also not limited to a single machine / OS.

Has anything changed recently in the forum software? Does it still work for other members?

The accidental "back" happened to me this morning, and I also noticed that my post-text had "magically" disappeared.
I was using the previous PaleMoon 27.0.2.
I just updated to 27.0.3 while making this post, restarted PaleMoon while still making this post, and then went back and forth a few times, and it kept the text!
Posted it, then went back to check making changes.
Weird, the altered text disappeared with <= / =>, but the 'old' text remained.

Noticed this a little while ago and I attributed it to the recent upgrade of the forum server. I now make sure that I copy the contents of my posting, if it's more than a few lines long, every few minutes just in case I hit the wrong key.

It appears that the problem of losing post content persists on both Pale Moon and Firefox, but seems to be working fine in Chrome.

Is there any way this can be investigated and fixed?

dr_st wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 24, 2017 1:37 pm

It appears that the problem of losing post content persists on both Pale Moon and Firefox, but seems to be working fine in Chrome.

Is there any way this can be investigated and fixed?

I think that is because Chrome and Firefox save textboxes automatically and hog every bit of memory you have in the process.

Thinkpad4by3 wrote: ↑

Tue Jan 30, 2018 7:53 am

I think that is because Chrome and Firefox save textboxes automatically and hog every bit of memory you have in the process.

Pale Moon (like old Firefox) saves some kind of fields automatically. It used to do it here too, but not after the last upgrade.

What happens is that with time different implementations of text fields are added, and the browsers have to adjust their capabilities to keep up. Pale Moon is based on rather old Firefox code, and it seems lately that more and more things slip through the cracks, and the small development team cannot keep up.

On a broader sense, it seems that Chrome is winning the web. Chrome is the new Internet Explorer. 10-15 years ago the entire web was basically developed to work on IE first, and everything else was optional. Now Chrome is in the same position. The only reason Firefox still manages to sort-of keep up is because it works very hard to copy everything Chrome does.

In this particular case, I was hoping that something that can be adjusted in the forum software to allow old browsers to still be able to auto-save content, but apparently it isn't really possible (or there is no sufficient expertise). Oh well.

I have now gone so far, that I opened up my mouse (M$ Intellimouse Explorer 3.0) and blocked the "page forward" and "page backward" buttons on the left side of that mouse.
Those buttons turned out to be my problem
Hurray, no more loss of post content!

RealBlackStuff wrote: ↑

Tue Jan 30, 2018 9:05 am

I have now gone so far, that I opened up my mouse (M$ Intellimouse Explorer 3.0) and blocked the "page forward" and "page backward" buttons on the left side of that mouse.
Those buttons turned out to be my problem
Hurray, no more loss of post content!

How can I do that on the classic keyboard? Too many times I hit the back key aiming for one of the others.

There are ways to recover posts. Easiest is with a browser plugin.

edit:
I tested the following on my sites and it worked. I'm not sure if it'd work here, with this site's javascript. The solution is autocomplete="on". Here is a mock-up of the updated phpBB code:

<form action="./posting.php..." method="post" name="postform" autocomplete="on">

<textarea name=asdf value=''>

</form>