Discourse back button sucks

[Pod]

@wumpus

Enter a topic you have never entered before, with at least let’s say 30 posts.
Scroll down to about half way.
Scroll up 4-5 posts.

(alternately, click on the top date in the scrollbar, or click the title of the topic itself, or press the home key on your keyboard.)

That’s it. Try it yourself if you don’t believe me. G’wan. I dare you. I triple dast dog dare you in fact!

Ok, so I did this and saw the blue back button. I then tried it again and it didn’t work.

I went to the Turkey Coup thread in the politics forum. I’ve never read that thread. I went half way down. I scrolled up 20 posts and I saw the button.

I then went to the end of the thread and scrolled up, and no matter how far I scrolled the button did not appear.

I then tried it again. I went to the Wells Fargo thread in the politics forum. I used the fake scroll bar to go to 128/138, I then scrolled up lots and never saw it.

Still, whether or not it works (and it doesn’t, as evidenced by @Thraeg’s efforts), it doesn’t change the fact that it’s a terrible design decision and Discourse is wrong for implementing it.

1. My browser has a back button, respect it.
2. There’s no need to implement your own back button and get it wrong.
3. When I click on something, let me go back using the (browser’s) back button.

Not doing so is intentionally breaking simple web browser fundamentals, is completely non-standard and most importantly pointlessly different from every other app. I don’t care if it’s a challenging feature to implement on your infinite scrolling – javascript has history editing functions, so use them,

edit

1. This is a link elsewhere
2. This is a link to this thread