RadioRadio
Thursday, June 27, 2002[10:40:05 AM]
A problem with a web interface. You can lose data -- like I just did.
The scenario was that I had submitted a Radio post, then put the Radio server (macintosh) to 'sleep'. Then I wrote and submitted a new post, but of course Radio was sleeping. I woke up the Mac, and hit the back button (in Mozilla 0.8ish) and got a dialog that the page had been generated by a form, and if I hit OK, it will submit the form again. Basically, I lost the post I had just written, and instead there was a previous post in the form.
Maybe I had hit edit for a previous post, then deleted the text to leave a blank textarea field, into which I typed the new post this morning? I don't think so. Every now and then, the back button just gives me a textarea field populated with some previous post.
What I suspect is happening is that the Radio webserver does an internal redirect, so the browser is cut off from the actual state. Web servers should do external redirects -- tell the browser to load the new url -- so that you can always hit reload in the browser and get the right page.
Even if this isn't the problem Radio is having, it's a key principle for web applications.
© Copyright 2002 john robert boynton.
Last update: 9/27/02; 6:31:22 PM.