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[tech] Client history behavior with redirects

Frank Jüdes Frank.Juedes at linux4specialists.com

Mon May 17 18:01:37 BST 2021

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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-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------My Gemini Capsule's orbit is gemini://h2903872.stratoserver.net-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- next part --------------An HTML attachment was scrubbed...URL: <https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/archives/gemini/attachments/20210517/c473647c/attachment.htm>-------------- next part --------------A non-text attachment was scrubbed...Name: Frank_Juedes.vcfType: text/x-vcardSize: 253 bytesDesc: not availableURL: <https://lists.orbitalfox.eu/archives/gemini/attachments/20210517/c473647c/attachment.vcf>