Why is the Back button broken in Internet Explorer for a PHP application but works in every other browser?

Question

I have a PHP application that works well in every browser except Internet Explorer.

The application generates reports based on MySQL data. Certain fields of each report are clickable and will redirect the user to another page/report after POST using the PHP header() call.

In Safari, Firefox, Opera, etc. when the user clicks the Back button they are taken back to the previous page/report. In Internet Explorer this behavior is broken and I get a "Webpage is expired" error.

I'm not worried about serving up stale data when using the Back button in IE.

Is there a setting I can tweak in IE to allow this behavior, or an HTML/PHP directive I can use?

Answer 1

Nope. Firefox, Chrome, etc. here implement a specific feature that notes that the last page in the browser history doesn't really count. IE apparently doesn't have that feature and is unaware that such a feature could possibly exist, so there is no way to try to get it to have it. (Newer versions may implement such behavior, though. Unsure.)

Since it's really not mission-critical, looks like those who use older browsers will just have to deal with a lesser experience. Sorry!