This happens on SDMB, but also on a lot of other web pages I visit. if I’m on page “A”, a single click on a link takes me to page “B”, but when I click the “back” button on my browser (MSIE) to return to page “A”, nothing happens; I’m still on page “B”. If I click on the button to show the recent sequence of pages I’ve visited, I end up seeing a long series of pages in between my current page (page “B”) and page “A”. If I want to get back to page “A” quickly, the best bet is to find a link on page “B” that takes me directly there. I could just click the “bacK” button repeatedly, but that takes a lot longer.
Can someone explain the browser machinations that result in a bunch of intermediate pages in my history that I never actually see? Is this something to do with advertising?
I had this problem on the SDMB and it was driving me crazy. At some point I put two entries in my HOSTS file to redirect requests to advertising sites to my local computer. This seems to have fixed the problem. It also shows error messages in little regions on the page that would otherwise be showing advertisements. I much prefer to see those error messages.
It’s not necessarily ads. When you hit a site, it could decide, “If they’re logged in, redirect them to the member page. If they’re not, redirect them to the login page. If they’re using a mobile browser, redirect…” etc. Browsers do try to tell which are automatic redirects and skip over them in the browser history, but it’s not always so straightforward, and as websites grow more complicated it gets even cloudier*.