Bug 233420 – Window.location setter not adding new global history entry (session history works as expected)

• Status: NEW
• Component: Page Loading

[Sam Sneddon [:gsnedders]]

<div>
<button id="mybutton1" type="button">
Change location
</button>
</div>

<script>
function MyClick1(event) {
  location = "https://underpassapp.com";
}
document.getElementById("mybutton1")
.addEventListener("click", MyClick1);
</script>

In Firefox and Chrome this creates a a new history item, in Safari this doesn't.

Perhaps https://wpt.fyi/results/html/browsers/browsing-the-web/navigating-across-documents/replace-before-load?label=master&label=experimental&product=chrome&product=firefox&product=safari&aligned&q=location-setter, but likely we have some WPT coverage for this.

[Radar WebKit Bug Importer]

<rdar://problem/85814717>

[Chris Dumez]

I am unable to reproduce.

When I click the button, I see history.length increase by one and there is an option to go back in the Safari UI.

[Chris Dumez]

I see this was reported on macOS 10.13 High Sierra which is super old. I am on macOS 12.1 Monterey so this could be why I cannot reproduce.

[Sam Sneddon [:gsnedders]]

(In reply to Chris Dumez from comment #3)
> I see this was reported on macOS 10.13 High Sierra which is super old. I am
> on macOS 12.1 Monterey so this could be why I cannot reproduce.

The post says "This bug appears to be many years old: it occurs in the latest version 15.1, and it occurs in the oldest version that I could test, Safari 11 on macOS 10.13 High Sierra."

Certainly I can reproduce it on 12.0.1 (21A559), but I don't have 12.1 immediately to hand.

[Chris Dumez]

*** Bug 233685 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Brady Eidson]

Chris I think you were testing the wrong thing.

This is about browser global history, not session history.

[Brady Eidson]

This blog post that spawned the radar mentioned that, not sure why that wasn’t included in the report 

https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/history.html

[Brady Eidson]

And on that note, this may be WebKit not sending a sensible history delegate message to Safari, or it might be Safari mishandling it. Investigation will be needed.