For all major browsers (except IE), the JavaScript onload event doesn’t fire when the page loads as a result of a back button operation — it only fires when the page is first loaded.
Can someone point me at some sample cross-browser code (Firefox, Opera, Safari, IE, …) that solves this problem? I’m familiar with Firefox’s pageshow event but unfortunately neither Opera nor Safari implement this.
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javascript
pageload
Unload event is not working fine on IE 9. I tried it with load event (onload()), it is working fine on IE 9 and FF5.
Example:
<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
pageEncoding="ISO-8859-1"%>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
<title>Insert title here</title>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
jQuery(window).bind("load", function() {
$("[name=customerName]").val('');
});
</script>
</head>
<body>
<h1>body.jsp</h1>
<form action="success.jsp">
<div id="myDiv">
Your Full Name: <input name="yourName" id="fullName"
value="Your Full Name" /><br> <br> <input type="submit"><br>
</div>
</form>
</body>
</html>
I couldn't get the above examples to work. I simply wanted to trigger a refresh of certain modified div areas when coming back to the page via the back button. The trick I used was to set a hidden input field (called a "dirty bit") to 1 as soon as the div areas changed from the original. The hidden input field actually retains its value when I click back, so onload I can check for this bit. If it's set, I refresh the page (or just refresh the divs). On the original load, however, the bit is not set, so I don't waste time loading the page twice.
<input type='hidden' id='dirty'>
<script>
$(document).ready(function() {
if ($('#dirty').val()) {
// ... reload the page or specific divs only
}
// when something modifies a div that needs to be refreshed, set dirty=1
$('#dirty').val('1');
});
</script>
And it would trigger properly whenever I clicked the back button.
Some modern browsers (Firefox, Safari, and Opera, but not Chrome) support the special "back/forward" cache (I'll call it bfcache, which is a term invented by Mozilla), involved when the user navigates Back. Unlike the regular (HTTP) cache, it captures the complete state of the page (including the state of JS, DOM). This allows it to re-load the page quicker and exactly as the user left it.
The load event is not supposed to fire when the page is loaded from this bfcache. For example, if you created your UI in the "load" handler, and the "load" event was fired once on the initial load, and the second time when the page was re-loaded from the bfcache, the page would end up with duplicate UI elements.
This is also why adding the "unload" handler stops the page from being stored in the bfcache (thus making it slower to navigate back to) -- the unload handler could perform clean-up tasks, which could leave the page in unworkable state.
For pages that need to know when they're being navigated away/back to, Firefox 1.5+ and the version of Safari with the fix for bug 28758 support special events called "pageshow" and "pagehide".
References:
I have used an html template. In this template's custom.js file, there was a function like this:
jQuery(document).ready(function($) {
$(window).on('load', function() {
//...
});
});
But this function was not working when I go to back after go to other page.
So, I tried this and it has worked:
jQuery(document).ready(function($) {
//...
});
//Window Load Start
window.addEventListener('load', function() {
jQuery(document).ready(function($) {
//...
});
});
Now, I have 2 "ready" function but it doesn't give any error and the page is working very well.
Nevertheless, I have to declare that it has tested on Windows 10 - Opera v53 and Edge v42 but no other browsers. Keep in mind this...
Note: jquery version was 3.3.1 and migrate version was 3.0.0
OK, I tried this and it works in Firefox 3, Safari 3.1.1, and IE7 but not in Opera 9.52.
If you use the example shown below (based on palehorse's example), you get an alert box pop-up when the page first loads. But if you then go to another URL, and then hit the Back button to go back to this page, you don't get an alert box pop-up in Opera (but you do in the other browsers).
Anyway, I think this is close enough for now. Thanks everyone!
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<meta http-equiv="expires" content="0">
<script src="jquery.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(
function(){
alert('test');
}
);
</script>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Test of the page load event and the Back button using jQuery</h1>
</body>
</html>
OK, here is a final solution based on ckramer's initial solution and palehorse's example that works in all of the browsers, including Opera. If you set history.navigationMode to 'compatible' then jQuery's ready function will fire on Back button operations in Opera as well as the other major browsers.
This page has more information.
Example:
history.navigationMode = 'compatible';
$(document).ready(function(){
alert('test');
});
I tested this in Opera 9.5, IE7, FF3 and Safari and it works in all of them.
Bill, I dare answer your question, however I am not 100% sure with my guesses. I think other then IE browsers when taking user to a page in history will not only load the page and its resources from cache but they will also restore the entire DOM (read session) state for it. IE doesn't do DOM restoration (or at lease did not do) and thus the onload event looks to be necessary for proper page re-initialization there.
If I remember rightly, then adding an unload() event means that page cannot be cached (in forward/backward cache) - because it's state changes/may change when user navigates away. So - it is not safe to restore the last-second state of the page when returning to it by navigating through history object.
I tried the solution from Bill using $(document).ready... but at first it did not work. I discovered that if the script is placed after the html section, it will not work. If it is the head section it will work but only in IE. The script does not work in Firefox.
for the people who don't want to use the whole jquery library i extracted the implementation in separate code. It's only 0,4 KB big.
You can find the code, together with a german tutorial in this wiki: http://www.easy-coding.de/wiki/html-ajax-und-co/onload-event-cross-browser-kompatibler-domcontentloaded.html
I ran into a problem that my js was not executing when the user had clicked back or forward. I first set out to stop the browser from caching, but this didn't seem to be the problem. My javascript was set to execute after all of the libraries etc. were loaded. I checked these with the readyStateChange event.
After some testing I found out that the readyState of an element in a page where back has been clicked is not 'loaded' but 'complete'. Adding || element.readyState == 'complete' to my conditional statement solved my problems.
Just thought I'd share my findings, hopefully they will help someone else.
Edit for completeness
My code looked as follows:
script.onreadystatechange(function(){
if(script.readyState == 'loaded' || script.readyState == 'complete') {
// call code to execute here.
}
});
In the code sample above the script variable was a newly created script element which had been added to the DOM.
I can confirm ckramer that jQuery's ready event works in IE and FireFox. Here's a sample:
<html>
<head>
<title>Test Page</title>
<script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function () {
var d = new Date();
$('#test').html( "Hi at " + d.toString() );
});
</script>
</head>
<body>
<div id="test"></div>
<div>
<a href="http://www.google.com">Go!</a>
</div>
</body>
</html>
I thought this would be for "onunload", not page load, since aren't we talking about firing an event when hitting "Back"? $document.ready() is for events desired on page load, no matter how you get to that page (i.e. redirect, opening the browser to the URL directly, etc.), not when clicking "Back", unless you're talking about what to fire on the previous page when it loads again. And I'm not sure the page isn't getting cached as I've found that Javascripts still are, even when $document.ready() is included in them. We've had to hit Ctrl+F5 when editing our scripts that have this event whenever we revise them and we want test the results in our pages.
$(window).unload(function(){ alert('do unload stuff here'); });
is what you'd want for an onunload event when hitting "Back" and unloading the current page, and would also fire when a user closes the browser window. This sounded more like what was desired, even if I'm outnumbered with the $document.ready() responses. Basically the difference is between an event firing on the current page while it's closing or on the one that loads when clicking "Back" as it's loading. Tested in IE 7 fine, can't speak for the other browsers as they aren't allowed where we are. But this might be another option.
OK, here is a final solution based on ckramer's initial solution and palehorse's example that works in all of the browsers, including Opera. If you set history.navigationMode to 'compatible' then jQuery's ready function will fire on Back button operations in Opera as well as the other major browsers.
This page has more information.
Example:
history.navigationMode = 'compatible';
$(document).ready(function(){
alert('test');
});
I tested this in Opera 9.5, IE7, FF3 and Safari and it works in all of them.
Source: Stackoverflow.com