'Puter question... Why doesn't my back button take me back?

[LeeH]

Let's say I'm looking at the Classic Car Trader. I enter my search and get a list of cars. I choose one of the cars to view. If I hit the back button I should go back to my list of cars, but instead get a "page cannot be displayed- cannot find server or DNS" error. Reloading from there gets me the search page. Any suggestions?

This happens on just about any web page I view that uses some sort of pull down menus for searching.

[djmcmath]

It's 'coz the page you're trying to get is dynamically generated. You go to the server and make a request for the first page, a static search request page. Conducting the search generates a query which produces the page. That page never actually exists on the server -- it only exists inside your little browser-world. When you go somewhere else, that page disappears forever, and must be regenerated.

Or maybe I pulled that all out of my arse. Does back work during normal browsing? Say you go to cnn.com, click on a news article, then hit back -- does it take you back to cnn?

Dan

[LeeH]

Yep. Back works fine under most circumstances. It's just the pull down menu and/or fill in the blank pages that I'm having trouble with.

[Joeaksa]

Lee,

Hit the back button and if it gives you the above message, then hit the "refresh" button and many times it will come up.

JoeA

[RickM]

I always thought it was because there was a redirect programmed into the page by the site builder.

Anyway, the way I get around it is by clicking on the history drop down and selecting the page previously viewed.

[LeeH]

If I hit refresh then it just give me the search page again instead of the results of the search results.

I just tried the same sequence on my wife's Apple iBook. It worked as I would expect. It's probably a setting somewhere, but I'm at a loss for which one.

[kang]

Oh by the way, it's spelled "pooter."