[whatwg] Do we really need history.clearState()?

[Justin Lebar]

On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 1:08 PM, Olli Pettay <Olli.Pettay at helsinki.fi> wrote:
> On 11/12/09 10:00 PM, Justin Lebar wrote:
>>
>> Perhaps a better idea is leaving this whole issue to the UA, which
>> could collapse all the entries from a single origin in the UI.  Then
>> we wouldn't need either function.
>
> How would UA collapse entries from a single origin?

Right now, the back button means "take me to the previous history
entry".  The UA could add a "take me back to the previous
document/origin" button.

Similarly, the browser could collect together all the entries from a
document or origin in the drop-down menu of history entries (the down
arrow next to the forward button in Firefox).  When you click the down
arrow, it could show a list of documents/origins, and when you hovered
over an entry in the list, it could expand out and show all the
entries associated with that document/origin.

> Brady Eidson <beidson at apple.com> wrote:
> Imagine the use case of the checkout procedure at an online merchant. [...]

I think this is a pretty good example of where clearState actually
helps.  I'm not sure how general it is, though.  A designer who wants
to use clearState in this way is forced to begin the checkout wizard
in a new Document.  Maybe that's OK, but it seems like an arbitrary
limitation to me.

-Justin