[whatwg] Proposed changes to the History API

[Justin Lebar]

Mike Wilson wrote:
> What you're essentially saying here is that when restarting
> the browser, you will also restore history data, correct?
>
> For tabs that were open when the browser was closed, this
> will mean that these will reappear after restart with full
> history, being able to go Back and restore state on
> previous pages?

Right.  We already do this, sans popping a state object.

> But for pages that were explicitly closed, and then
> navigated to in a "new" tab, will you restore the full
> history in these as well?

No.  The state object is attached to the session history entry, not to
the page's URI.  If you close a tab, all its session history entries
go away.  If you navigate to a page which was open in the tab you just
closed, that new instance of the page won't be aware of the old page's
state object(s).

> And if there has been several sessions in parallel on that
> URL space, which one do you respawn for a navigation to a
> related page in a new tab?

A navigation on a new tab would get an entirely new environment.
Otherwise, like you suggested, this would be very confusing.

-Justin