It seems to be a Windows IE issue.
I made some changes to the code, please report if this fixes it.
It's weird because still can't duplicate the issue on my IE browser...
I'm usually on Win 7, 64 bit, but sometimes I am on an XP pro SP 3, 32 bit box. (That's the only machine I have with IE8.) Here's what happens on that computer:
When I open a new IE8 browser window and go to the FM home page, the browsing history pulldown menu already looks odd: Instead of showing "current page" as the only entry, as it does on most sites, it shows three entries: "current page" plus two copies of "googleads.g.doubleclick.net/page". These extra pages don't show up in Firefox on the same computer.
The problem fixing this issue is that I cannot replicate it using the OS and browsers mentioned. It never happens with me.
Perhaps it only happens in a certain page or with a specific ad showing. To help me fix this, whenever this happens again, please give me the link of the page it happened and the perhaps the 'ads' it was showing.
Fred
I feel your frustration. From my own experience working on software, there's nothing more aggravating than a customer-reported bug you can't reproduce.
When I use IE, the problem happens on the FM home page, and for every page on FM after that. It's not the back button per se that's screwed up: It's that for some reason, the way that FM pages load messes up IE's notion of the page history.
Here's the test case for my system. (I tried starting IE with all add-ons disabled to make sure that it wasn't some third-party plug-in on my system that was causing the problem):
1. open a fresh IE browser window
2. visit any common site, such as www.ebay.com
The history button immediately to the right of the address bar is now greyed out, because there's nothing in the history, yet. The back button is also greyed out, because there is no "previous" page to go to, yet. So far, so good.
3. type www.fredmiranda.com in the address bar and hit return, and then wait a few seconds to make sure that the page and all the ads on it have completed loading
The back button and history button are now active, as you would expect.
But ....
What I expect to see when I left-click on the history button:
1 an entry for www.ebay.com
2 an entry for the current page (www.fredmiranda.com)
3 nothing else
What I actually see:
1 an entry for www.ebay.com
2 one or more entries that say "https://www.googleads.g.doubleclick.net/page"
3 an entry for "fredmiranda.com"
(I think that this is probably the longest post I've made on FM. )
aborr's post is right. I'll only add that sometimes the history shows one or two google ad history items and sometimes 20 or more. No rhyme or reason to it that I can detect.
I feel your frustration. From my own experience working on software, there's nothing more aggravating than a customer-reported bug you can't reproduce.
When I use IE, the problem happens on the FM home page, and for every page on FM after that. It's not the back button per se that's screwed up: It's that for some reason, the way that FM pages load messes up IE's notion of the page history.
Here's the test case for my system. (I tried starting IE with all add-ons disabled to make sure that it wasn't some third-party plug-in on my system that was causing the problem):
1. open a fresh IE browser window
2. visit any common site, such as www.ebay.com
The history button immediately to the right of the address bar is now greyed out, because there's nothing in the history, yet. The back button is also greyed out, because there is no "previous" page to go to, yet. So far, so good.
3. type www.fredmiranda.com in the address bar and hit return, and then wait a few seconds to make sure that the page and all the ads on it have completed loading
The back button and history button are now active, as you would expect.
But ....
What I expect to see when I left-click on the history button:
1 an entry for www.ebay.com
2 an entry for the current page (www.fredmiranda.com)
3 nothing else
What I actually see:
1 an entry for www.ebay.com
2 one or more entries that say "https://www.googleads.g.doubleclick.net/page"
3 an entry for "fredmiranda.com"
(I think that this is probably the longest post I've made on FM. )
Following the steps above I was actually able to reproduce this problem, but it seems to be happening very randomly. I get several of these adsense records in my history and then, after viewing another page, all of them suddenly disappear and the back button is working properly again.
A search on the web shows that this is a known problem with Google Adsense and Internet Explorer. There appears to be lots of other sites where this happens. This is one of the pages I found about the problem: http://trioniclabs.com/2012/02/back-button-mystery/
This seems to be something that needs to be fixed by Google. Most likely a bug in the javascript code used for adsense.
This problem is worse today than I have ever seen it.
Usually it only happens on Buy and Sell, today it is happening on every forum.
It is almost to the point that I am going to boycott Google, and my phne is a droid.
Is there a Google contact that we can bombard with complaints?
Unfortunately I have not noticed it on any other site that I frequent.
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