Must web apps support back button?

Question

I did a system test on a new ASP.NET app. I encountered several exceptions when using the BACK button in my browser (IE 7).

I stated in a review-record that the web-app must support the use of a BACK button (or at least handle it gracefully with for example session-time out warnings). The teamlead did not agree with me as he stated that a web-app should not support working with the back-button by default.

Do you agree?

Answer 1

Yes, yes they should.

Answer 2

My personal opinion is that any website that doesn't handle the back button reasonably gracefully if not entirely correctly is taking a huge hit in usability terms. People understand the back button. Moreso, they like it.

Pages can be slow to load. I don't want to have to fully load a page each time I open an item on a list just to go back to that list.

With POST+REDIRECT+GET and other idioms you can get nice behaviour with the back button and that's what you should strive for.

Answer 3

You should definitly support the back button in a web app. Users do really assume that this features is supported.

You can read about PRG on this blogpost http://blog.andreloker.de/post/2008/06/Post-Redirect-Get.aspx or on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post/Redirect/Get

Answer 4

I think that all web apps should support the back button. If it breaks your app and you can't code for it, then at least put some javascript on the navigate away event to let the user know that the back button isn't supported and using it might cause loss of work.

It's frustrating when you click a back button and get to a non working page and you end up losing something you were working on.

Support it or at least make sure a user knows that they can't use it, and remind them when they click it out of habit.

Answer 5

All apps should support the back button. Everyone uses it and you cannot tell your users to change their browsing habits just for your webpage. Yes it's petty, but so are users. Like me, for example. No joke, I will not use a web page/app that does not support the back button. It just frustrates me the first time it happens and I look for the next Google result.