redirect handling specification

Hello,

As a non-W3C member, I’m not sure what the proper procedure is for recommending changes to specifications. I apologize in advance if this is not the appropriate mailing list for this message …

I was noticing recently that when I read blogs/articles that discuss http-redirects that they include the caveat that re-directs may cause browser navigation (back button) to mess up; in turn causing user-dissatisfaction. I think that problem should really be addressed. http-redirects, especially from a server after having performed some authentication or other checks can be quite useful.

The answer seems relatively simple; a browser handling an http-redirect should replace the calling page in the browser history with the page being redirected to. So, user navigates from page A to page B, page B redirects to page C. User hits the back button and gets page A.

There may be legitimate reasons why current behavior of a redirect would be desirable. If so, then would it be better to have a navigate-to header option that tells the browser to go to a new page rather than replace the current one in the history?

Of course for backward-compatability current behavior could be left alone and a replace-page header or something to that effect could be implemented that would tell the browser/client how to treat a redirect intended to replace a page rather than navigate away from it.

Perhaps this is more of an http than an html issue, if there is a better list to submit this to please let me know.

-Art C

Arthur Clifford