Question

I got this BrowserIssues report from a user:

I edit a page, then I hit "Preview" and see the doc. Normally I can hit "Back" to go back and edit - but most of the time when I do this (it's inconsistent, but has happened at least 4-5 times on me now) it puts me in the editor with the previous version of my doc, i.e. it forgets all that I've just added in.

If I then hit "Forward", it takes me back to the Preview page with my edits, and I can Save ok.

I thought this was user error the first couple of times, but now I'm certain there's something wrong. It used to work fine.

I'm on Windows 2000, using IE 5.0

I pointed him to BrowserIssues, and got this reply:

Ah, I think I've figured it now -

It's got to do with opening the "Text Formatting Rules" page while in the Editing window. This is what I was doing, and it kills it every time.

• open a page for editing
• make a minor change
• click on "Text Formatting Rules" to open the instructions page
• make another minor change
• click "Preview"
• hit "Back"
• now all your edits are gone.

This explains why I only saw it sometimes.

I could not verify this. Please respond if you have seen this bug or found a solution.

• TWiki version: 15 Mar 2001
• Web server: Apache
• Server OS: Solaris

• Client browser: IE 5.0
• Client OS: Windows 2000

-- PeterThoeny - 28 Jul 2001

Answer

The reason your edit occasionally fails is because, somewhere, you're opening up another browser window while you're previewing a topic, and then you click the "back" button. What this does (and I can only vouch for IE) is that it either flushes the edit textbox or goes back to a cached version. What this results in is an (apparent) total loss of your changes. If you're lucky enough to catch this problem, simply click the "forward" button and save your changes. If you're UNlucky (like I was the first time I saw this), you will lose a LOT of changes! I don't know how to fix this, because it's a browser problem, not a TWiki problem.

-- DavidWeller - 31 Jul 2001

See my comments at the end of BrowserIssues. There is no great solution, but it is easily reproducible and there is a workaround IMO, involving a template change.

-- RichardDonkin - 01 Aug 2001

There is now a better test case and discussion of this problem at BackFromPreviewLosesText. UPDATE: Now fixed, see that page for details - RichardDonkin, 20 Jan 2002.

-- RichardDonkin - 28 Nov 2001