[wp-meta] [Making WordPress.org] #1380: Lost text without warning when click link in Trac without JavaScript enabled

[Making WordPress.org]

#1380: Lost text without warning when click link in Trac without JavaScript
enabled
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Reporter:  pdfernhout  |      Owner:
    Type:  defect      |     Status:  new
Priority:  normal      |  Component:  Trac
Keywords:              |
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 **Expected Behavior:** When JavaScript is not enabled, Trac should always
 either open links supplied by Trac in new pages, or Trac should preserve
 entered text when a user clicks the the back button after viewing a link
 supplied by Trac.

 **Observed behavior:** If you do not have JavaScript enabled for the Trac
 page (like when using NoScript with FireFox), and enter a new issue in
 Trac, or enter an update an existing issue, and then click the Wiki
 Formatting link, you will proceed to that Wiki Formatting page, and when
 you press the back button, your entered text will be gone. That happened
 to me after entering the text for my first WordPress bug report when I was
 almost finished and I went to check a formatting issue. :-(

 If you have JavaScript enabled, when you click the Wiki Formatting link
 (or presumably other links, but I have not tested them), you will instead
 receive a warning about possible data loss and will be asked to confirm
 you want to leave the page. That works well, but not everyone has
 JavaScript enabled everywhere. Trac seems to otherwise work without
 JavaScript.

 The same issue applies for other links on that page. Of those, the search,
 contributor handbook, and Trac Tickets links are probably the most likely
 to be clicked on when working on a new ticket and thus lead to lost text.

 I have only tested this in FireFox with NoScript, but I assume other
 browsers would act the same way without JavaScript enabled.

 **Possible solutions:** I don't know the best way to deal with the issue,
 but one possibility is to open all of those links in new browser pages (at
 least when JavaScript is not enabled). That is probably the easiest fix.
 When JavaScript is enabled, those links could be rewritten to open in the
 same page if preserving the current behavior under JavaScript was
 desirable. Alternatively, Trac could require JavaScript to be enabled to
 use it, but that does not feel like a good choice to me for just this one
 issue given the previous option. Or, as another possibility, there may be
 something which could be changed that Trac is currently doing to reset the
 entered text or cause a page reload when re-visiting the page by using the
 back button; it is otherwise common to go back to a page with entered text
 in FireFox and have the entered text still be there.

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Ticket URL: <https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/1380>
Making WordPress.org <https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/>
Making WordPress.org