The Back Button, preventing form submit
August 23rd, 2007 | by Priyatam |“You cannot use the back button of your browser when ordering tickets. Doing so may cause inaccurate information on your confirmation and/or your credit card. If you use your back button, we cannot guarantee your ticket reservation! If you need to make a change or have made an error, you must click Cancel Order and start the process again”
No, this is not a joke. I’ve seen these errors creeping up from many websites, most notably cheap travel agents and ultra-cheap third party shopping sites. For users, it is frustrating. For developers like me, it’s sad to see the lack of understanding of the back button.
Perhaps Redirct After Post Pattern is not ubiquitous! For more in depth analysis, read here. Or, you can prevent duplicate form submits like this. The point is, there are various solutions, both client side and server side to easily accomplish a duplicate form submit and/or make a back button fail-safe operation. Surprises me that a lot of web applications still lack this fundamental feature.