Back - Refresh - and the New Tags

[Josette]

I've just got to see if there is an explanation for this.  It has been driving me crazy.

When I go to a section of the forum, i.e., Events or Current Talk, and there are several items that are "New" - let's say 6 of them, I start at the one at the bottom, click "New" and after reading that one, click "Back" to return to the list and do the one above it, and so on until I've seen all 6, movng from oldest to newest.

Now, when I was able to get in with Mozilla for a while, I noticed that each time I returned to the list, the "New" was still there.  That made sense, since I was just returning to the previous page and not refreshing it.

But in IE, both before the switch and after I had to resume using it, that didn't happen.  Each time I returned to the page, the "new" would be gone from the one I had just read.  It made it a lot easier to remember where I left off to click the next one.  It surprised me since the page wasn't being refreshed, but I liked that it worked that way.

All right - now I've got a new computer - and when I use IE, it's a combination of the two.  I've been paying close attention the last few days to make sure.  In each section, the first item I do, when I hit "back," the "new" has disappeared from that item.  But, all the subsequent items retain the "new" until I refresh the page.  Surely, it has to work one way or the other!!  It is quite consistent.  The first one I do on a page loses its "new" and all of the others remain unless it's refreshed.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

All right - now I've got a new computer - and when I use IE, it's a combination of the two.  I've been paying close attention the last few days to make sure.  In each section, the first item I do, when I hit "back," the "new" has disappeared from that item.  But, all the subsequent items retain the "new" until I refresh the page.  Surely, it has to work one way or the other!!  It is quite consistent.  The first one I do on a page loses its "new" and all of the others remain unless it's refreshed.

Nothing IE might do surprises me anymore, which is one of the reasons I use it as infrequently as possible.

But so far as navigating the boards go, I never use my browser's back button. When I'm reading topics on a board, I do it just like you, oldest to newest - but when I'm done with one, I use the "Jump To" menu at the bottom of each topic to go back to that board. The name of the board is already listed there, so I just have to click the "Go" button. And the nice thing about using "Jump To" is that when you go back to the index of topics, the new icon has always disappeared from the topic you've just read.

Why not try that and see if you like it.

[Josette]

I've never been able to get that to work for the topic I'm in.  I can Jump To a different one, say from Current Talk to Robservations, but if I'm in Current Talk, I've never been able to get it to return to Current Talk.  I'll try again.

P.S.  From your first comment, apparently you have no explanation.  It just seemed impossible that it would work one way for the first item and differently for all the others, and I've been curious as to how that could be.

P.P.S.  All right - it works!  Maybe it's the new computer or the newer (I assume) IE that came with it.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

I've never been able to get that to work for the topic I'm in.  I can Jump To a different one, say from Current Talk to Robservations, but if I'm in Current Talk, I've never been able to get it to return to Current Talk.

Going back to same board with Jump to never did work with IE on the YaBB SP forum. But it works with both Netscape and IE in SE. And SE's Go button makes it even easier to use.

From your first comment, apparently you have no explanation.

I haven't got the vaguest idea. Most of how IE behaves is an enigma to me. And apparently it's even that way for the MS programmers who created it. How else can one explain the fact that seemingly every other month there's a new patch released to fix some newly discovered bug?