[whatwg] page refresh and resubmitting POST state

[Mike Wilson]

Aryeh Gregor wrote:
> You should spell out the existing problem carefully  and in 
> great detail, including existing solutions or workarounds, to
> get the best response. 

I certainly intend to do this once I get feedback on whether
this subject is relevant for HTML5, or any other whatwg spec
(preferrably from people involved in authoring these). Time
is limited and I would like to only spend this effort if
applicable to spec work.

Looking at the current spec I haven't found any section that
directly relates to this subject, that's why I'm asking if it
is in the spec's scope to add a section about it. 

An observation though, is that the Web Storage text (that was
previously in the HTML5 spec) discusses a client-side session 
to alleviate the problem of using cookies together with 
multiple windows/tabs:
http://www.w3.org/TR/webstorage/#introduction
The multi window vs cookie scenario is something I consider 
part of the "page state" problem space, but other parts of this
problem space don't map well to web storage...

> I don't think refresh is a big deal.

I've been using refresh/resubmit as an easy example so that
everybody knows what I am talking about. The subject of page 
state handling has far greater implications than refresh, just
like you show in your examples below.

> I've tried outlining it later in this post,
> but you might be able to contribute further info.
..
> The problem is that since HTTP is stateless, you don't have the data
> available to show a confirmation page.  For instance, suppose a user
..
> Another workaround is to have a database table or memcached key or
> something that stores a "move ID" with the info, and put the move ID
..
> A similar workaround would be to use cookies.  This is nicer than the
> previous method, but has the potential to break confusingly if the
..
> Yet another workaround would be just to dispense with the confirmation
> page.  For instance, when making a new post in a forum, the user could
..

Yes, these are some of the workarounds I also had in mind which
exemplify how web authors sometimes have to battle the page state
handling in the browser.
When/if this subject seems to relate to the HTML5 effort, I would
like to contribute to a larger discussion on these kinds of topics.

Best regards
Mike