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IE10 Back button refresh - how to disable

thanibee

New Member
Both metro and desktop browsers in my surface RT exhibits the auto refresh of the page already visited when the bcack button is clicked. Is it possible to disable this behaviour?

Thanks

Sent from the SurfaceForums.net app for Windows 8
 

oion

Well-Known Member
This is a default Internet Explorer behavior I've hated for a long time. (I moved on to Opera quite some years ago, however, so I don't know if IE "fixed" the problem previously and it came back in IE in Win8 or something.)

ie10 Metro automatically reloads the page when I go back. - Microsoft Community

Summary: Maybe sort of, but not really. At least not yet? (Log in and "me too" the question, if that helps MS see traffic, no idea.)

The "Check for newer versions of stored pages" option might work for only the desktop version, according to one comment, and the Metro IE10 (at least in WinRT) doesn't give additional options pertaining to refresh. I found a couple comments here and there saying that using the back button in Metro IE10 is better than swiping (what's the point, then). I can't test this extensively, right now, though...

Edit: May or may not be fixed with 8.1 RTM--someone said yes and another said no, but the latter was on preview, so who knows. I don't suppose someone with RT 8.1 final could check.
 
Last edited:

Pepper

Member
Surface Pro on 8.1 RTM and IE11. Every time I touch the back button, the indicator twirls, is that what we're talking about? (this is on the desktop)
 

oion

Well-Known Member
Surface Pro on 8.1 RTM and IE11. Every time I touch the back button, the indicator twirls, is that what we're talking about? (this is on the desktop)

Basically, when going back/forward in your page history, a web browser can either reload the page and download content from the server again or attempt to load the cached version of the page that was stored on your computer when you visited before.

The latter browser behavior is much faster and saves bandwidth if you're on a limited connection (e.g. tethering). The former browser behavior is fine for content that you'd expect to be somewhat dynamic--for example going back to a weather forecast website (so it's good to reload that), but under normal circumstances, it's not needed; just manually reload if you want to refresh a page.

I really hope this will be resolved, whether by official Microsoft option support or by hack. Auto-reload is inefficient and annoying. I honestly don't see the point in this browser behavior. I suppose one way that I had minimized this annoyance was by opening pages as new tabs just to avoid the slow reload.
 
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