Safari reloading pages when going back

Well... Your post makes a lot of sense, except for the fact that other browsers, chrome for example, don't refresh the whole page like Safari does... Why is that?

That's why I use chrome instead of safari.

I don't think it is a "perceived" thing. We noticed it cuz it didn't use to do it before, the proof? Other browsers don't do it.

Agreed.

Still using Firefox until they sort this.... but they're unlikely to.

My best guess is that Firefox and Chrome use a more aggressive caching strategy.

Historically, Apple writes Safari to adhere closely to the standards and protocols set forth by the W3C, and protocol says that a cached page be checked against the server version when it's referred so the user is seeing an accurate version of the page.

Web devs will tell you that Safari is a breath of fresh air when coding a website, because it follows all the rules and is usually among the first to impliment new upcoming standards that haven't yet been officially ratified by W3C (early support for color profiles, HTML5, etc).

While Chrome and Firefox may trade off protocol recommendations for more persistent caching, which usually (but not always) works well for the end user, this strategy may also occasionally show up as a bug and can be a major headache for web developers. Internet Explorer is a shining example of this. Us web devs can code a site and it'll work and display perfectly Safari, Chrome and all the rest, and then we have to recode it with hacks to work in IE, which doesn't adhere to standards, and to a lesser extent, Firefox. As a user, have have you ever had a site that will only work in IE? Yeah, frustrating. It's because the web dev coded it specifically for IE because IE writes their own standards and doesn't conform.

If it helps, just recognize that Safari is doing what it's supposed to be doing. The problem is in Apple's implimentation of the animation. Software development is often a trade-off between what's ideal and what can be done within external constraints. But yeah, I agree, Apple should find a way around this dilema.

I have been experienced this issue recently, but only on heavy JavaScript pages.

Navigating back (one finger swipe left Magic Mouse) often left a blank page or froze it for 1-2 seconds when rapidly trying to scroll up/down.

I am on Safari 7 (Mavericks) and after adding the developer menu and checking "Disable Caches" it seems every thing is back to normal and even snappier! Hope this helps until further improvements.

As shallow as it sounds, I think Safari is more beautiful with swipe between pages 😉

That's an interesting answer but I'm not sure it's the problem I have on my iPad mini. My problem is hopping from one tab to another to check something and having whole blog comments or forum posts wiped. So if, for example, I write a long comment on a blog and then go to look for a link before I click post, returning to the tab with my comment in it will reload the entire page, thus losing everything I have written. On my PC, pages remain static, pretty much so I can hop from one to another.

To be honest, it's unbelievably annoying. I was hoping there might be some kind of app I could fix it with. I'm using Safari but I'm not running any extensions, I don't even know how to install them on an iPad. ;-)

Any help ideas would be hugely appreciated.

Cheers

MTM

Edited for clarity

I just chatted to a few customer representatives and their best advice to fix this issue was to reinstall os x. I'd rather not do that right now, so until there is a safari update, I'll likely go back to using chrome. The Apple workers I chat with, by the way, never seem to be aware of the issues I experience with my Apple products, or at least they're not supposed to let on that they are. Having one of them tell me they've never heard of an issue that has a thread on here with over 80 replies and 45,000 views is a bit ridiculous.

If someone (apple) could guarantee that reinstalling Mac OS would solve this I'd do it, but I doubt they'd even admit that there's an issue - such is their philosophy these days.

How could reinstalling OS X be relevant even in the slightest? It's a problem with Safari, not OS X.

I am not convinced it is a fix, but reinstalling OS X could be relevant, even in the slightest, as there is no standalone download for Safari.

That would imply it's something "gone wrong" in Safari. It isn't. It's how Safari has always behaved and there's no persuading Apple it shouldn't behave that way. Reinstalling Safari won't cure the problem.

Christopher Rigby wrote:

"That would imply it's something "gone wrong" in Safari. It isn't. It's how Safari has always behaved and there's no persuading Apple it shouldn't behave that way. Reinstalling Safari won't cure the problem."

I've been using Safari since its inception and your statement is completely incorrect. Why do you think this thread exists? The issue is with how caching is handled in later versions compared with earlier versions. There's also every liklihood that the core OS can affect how caching is dealt with, so your previous comment may also be incorrect.

Do not waste your time reinstalling OSX. This is a Safari issue. It doesn't matter wether the OS is telling it to cache this way or Safari itself, Apple needs to change the behavior. At the very least make this a setting that we can change. It is not a bug with Safari, they designed it this way, Safari behaves this way on my Mac and both my iPhone and iPad.

Exactly Steve. That's what I was saying before. Andy Thornton may have been using Safari since inception, but I've been using it since 2006, and I can say that its behaviour compared with Firefox in doing 'Goback's, is quite different. Safari has always reloaded the page, whereas FF loads direct from cache irrespective of the latest state of the particular page, and is therefore instant.

It IS - as you say - a Safari issue, and only Apple can change its behaviour.

I think you are dismissing this as a perceived delay too easily. When I am on Reddit and click to an imgur image, then 2 finger swipe back, the old reddit page shows briefly, then the entire screen goes white. It will stay white forever, unless I do something like force a reload. However, the page is there - I can click (blindly), and click through a link to another page. So it sounds like your impression of the problem is different from what you describe. This happens every 10 minutes or so, maybe? Maybe 1 out of a few dozen back swipes. It is very annoying.

I think the perceived delay theory is correct. If you hit the back button rather than swiping back you spend an equivalent amount of time staring at the current page as the page you are going back to reloads in the background. However, what I cannot understand is why, if Safari has always worked like this, has it only recently become apparent (in my case within the last couple of weeks)? I've changed nothing, which tends to suggest someone else has. It seems likely that an update has caused the change. I wish I could change it back. It is SO annoying.

I do not think I shall be reinstalling the OS. The last time I contacted Apple about a problem was when I bought this iMac and found it had the problem, widely reported in this forum at the time, where the screen tended towards yellow on one side. In their usual helpful way they denied all knowledge and told me that the best solution would be to reload the OS. Of course this would have done no good. Obfuscation seems to be standard practice at Apple customer care and I do not think I shall be buying Apple again.