Frustrating behavior: clicking a notification replaces an open page in browser, can't retrieve it?

[David N.]

This is a frustrating behavior. 

1. I visit a page from my forum (page A) and keep it open in a tab, hoping to come back to it when I get a minute. 
2. I receive a notification banner that there's a new reply to another topic. 
3. I click the banner. 
4. The page I had kept open (page A) is replaced with that other topic (page B). 
5. I click the "Back" button on my browser: it takes me back to the list of topics. There's no way to find page A again. 

 

[Marc Stridgen]

I'm not sure the issue you are reporting here is an issue with the software, unfortunately. If the back button on your browser isn't taking you back to where you were previously, that would be a browser issue.

[David N.]

1 hour ago, Marc Stridgen said:

If the back button on your browser isn't taking you back to where you were previously, that would be a browser issue.

I'm pretty sure it's an issue with how the Invision software is coded: My back button works as expected and takes me back 1 step in my history for that tab, however when I click a notification banner to visit a page, the current page is wiped out of the history to be replaced with the new one. This happens only with the Invision software, and it happens with all browsers. 

In any case I really wish that clicking a notification would open a new tab and not replace one of the currently opened forum pages, that would make more sense. 

[opentype]

40 minutes ago, David N. said:

In any case I really wish that clicking a notification would open a new tab and not replace one of the currently opened forum pages, that would make more sense. 

Users already have the choice to open links with our without new tabs/windows using their browser functions. (I press the Command key on my Mac for example for a new tab). Forcing a new tab through HTML removes that choice, so it only makes things worse. 

[David N.]

4 hours ago, opentype said:

Users already have the choice to open links with our without new tabs/windows using their browser functions. (I press the Command key on my Mac for example for a new tab). Forcing a new tab through HTML removes that choice, so it only makes things worse. 

I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing? It doesn't matter whether or not I press the Command key here when clicking a notification banner on my desktop Mac, for Invision Community, it always rewrites one of my website's already opened tab and never opens a new tab. 

I'm talking about clicking this: 

Here's a simple example: 

I have only one tab opened with page A on my website. 

I click a notification banner about a new reply to another topic.

The new topic overwrites the tab that had page A opened. There's no way to go back: the back button in Chrome is disabled (as if I was never on another page before). The tab does not register the overwriting as a new page in the history, it's the same page, only its content was overwritten. I can't go back to page A. 

[Marc Stridgen]

I have tagged this for the attention of our developers to have a read of. I cant see how we can control this, however Im not one of the developers myself, so its not to say someone else might

[David N.]

1 minute ago, Marc Stridgen said:

I have tagged this for the attention of our developers to have a read of. I cant see how we can control this, however Im not one of the developers myself, so its not to say someone else might

Thank you Marc. Different websites behave differently when clicking a notification banner like this. Some websites (Reddit for example) have even changed the behavior for their notifications in the past. 

[David N.]

I was able to make an animate screen capture of the behavior if that helps. I'd rather not share publicly but I can send it by email. 

[Marc Stridgen]

Feel free to PM it to me

[David N.]

Done. Thanks! 

[Marc Stridgen]

Thank you. I have attached that here, hidden, so my colleagues can see the issue in action. To be honest, personally I cant see how we could affect that, however of course Im not one of the developers

[David N.]

Thanks. I just had this happen to me again: I was typing a private message to someone, got a notification, clicked it, and my browser window was updated to the new page. Thankfully the private message is saved in the text area and I was able to retrieve it when I went back. 

Edited May 11 by David N.

[David N.]

Interesting. Now I can no longer reproduce the issue if only one tab of my website is open in my forum. 

The issue remains if I have more than one tab open though. 

[Marc Stridgen]

Do you have any extentions running on the browser. Given what you have said there, its sounding more and more browser related. Of course we cant tell it to do different things if there are different numbers of tabs open

[David N.]

The only extension I have is 1password.

[David N.]

Well scratch that, I can reproduce the issue with only one tab open. So there's another variable which makes it work sometimes and not other times. 

37 minutes ago, Marc Stridgen said:

Do you have any extentions running on the browser.

I can reproduce the issue with no extensions. 

37 minutes ago, Marc Stridgen said:

Given what you have said there, its sounding more and more browser related. Of course we cant tell it to do different things if there are different numbers of tabs open

Bugs aren't always predictable, there may be a variable that we're not accounting for here, such as if I had already visited that notification or not for example, I'm not sure. 

I'm using an up to date version of Chrome (Version 113.0.5672.92 (Official Build) (arm64)) on macOS 12.3.1. All extensions disabled.