Disable Browser Back Button

Anon

Hi Guys,

   How can i disable the back button in browser by using JavaScript?

                       Regards
                        SAJ

Anon

You can't.

Anon

And to be honest you shouldn't. Never break the browser functionality, it confuses the user.

Anon

Not only does it confuse the user but when the poor sod finally escapes your page he's unlikely to hold your site in kind regard.

Nick

razorsedgeuk

Out of interest, if you are creating a site with secure information, how do you disable the effects of "back"?

I.e. Imagine a set of terminals (PCs with IE, mainly) in room where the employees are able to come and access the personnel database to make sure the information maintained by the company is accurate.

They are also able to update the details.

I have all sorts of no-caching enabled (which seems to be working ok), but, if you press "Back", you will get a page saying that the page has expired, and by pressing refresh the page can be re-accessed.

In effect this is like pressing the submit button on the form again.

How do you handle these things? If this happens, I want PHP to recognise that this is an old page and automatically re-direct to the login page.

Any ideas/suggestions/etc. welcome.

Regards,

Richard Quadling.

Anon

I had this problem with a registration screen. After the user registers I wanted to disable the page so they couldn't return and enter in a new user. I created a variable that is passed to the page from a previous page confirming payment to first check if they had even paid their fees. Then after they hit the submit button and login my function sets the variable $session[logged_in] = true. Then a simple if statement checks if they are and if so they are redirected and can't ever return or update that page ever again without paying first.

if ( $session[logged_in] )
{
header( "Location: /already.php?".SID );
}

This way might not work for you I don't know. You could set up the code to destroy the session once the database has been updated. That way if they try to return with the back button all variables will be destroyed and they will be automatically be directed to the login page. Voila!

knickerlas

What would happen if the user closed his browser ending the session?

Nick

Anon

I was about to suggest the same thing! 🙂

sarijit

Hi,
Why not try "javascript:window.history.forward(1);" in the page where you don't want user to retun after leaving once.........

Good luck.

Anon

Hi !

This is again the same problem of back button problems.
First of all let me tell you, I have read lots of conversations about disabling back, should not be done so, expiring page, etc etc...
But here in my case, no security related page is being displayed, but the page is displaying some Javascript manipulated controls (like slider, on/off switch) on page, which take input of previous state from server side session. After controls are displayed with previous state, user can still modify the state and submit the page.
Here in this case, if user hits Back button of the browser, request doesn't go to server and hence old user inputs are given to controls (slider length, On/Off state of switch) which may be different from user's recent selection.
Hope I am able to make the picture clear.
Now can anyone suggest me the solution to display the recent state back to user on Back button hit??

Sincere thanks well in advance.

Abhi

Anon

Just to add some information to my problem,
I am using JSP-Servlet combination in J2EE application,
Application should run on browsers Netscape 4.x and above/IE 4.0 and above/AOL 4.x and above.

Urgent replies will be of esteem importance.

Anon

Check this page
<a href="http://developer.irt.org/script/311.htm">http://developer.irt.org/script/311.htm
</a>