Posted by Harlan Messinger on 08/08/06 14:18

[top-posting corrected]
harvey wrote:
>
> Harlan Messinger wrote:
>> onlystuff@gmail.com wrote:
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> Using the following code
>>>
>>> <form id="form1" name="form1" method="post" action="">
>>> <input name="radiobutton" type="radio" value="radiobutton"
>>> id="radiobutton" />
>>> <label for="radiobutton">Radio Button One</label>
>>>
>>> <input name="radiobutton" type="radio" value="radiobutton"
>>> id="radio" />
>>> <label for="radio">Radio Button Two</label>
>>>
>>> </form>
>>>
>>> if I preview the page in Firefox, make a selection then hit refresh,
>>> Firefox remembers my choice. I want it start over as if the form is
>>> empty and its the first time you hit the page.
>>>
>>> How can I prevent this with out using Javascript. IE is fine and
>>> likewise for Opera.
>>>
>>> Is IE doing the correct thing or is this a bug and Firefox is actually
>>> doing the right thing by remembering?
>> I believe the behavior is undefined, which means browsers can handle it
>> any way their designers find appropriate. But why should you
>> second-guess your users' expectations over what will happen? Assuming
>> they even thought about it, some would probably expect one behavior on
>> refresh and the others would expect the other. The real question is why
>> a user would be refreshing the page at all after having started filling
>> out the form, or why he would have an expectation either way if he did
>> refresh it.
>>
>> If your goal is to provide users with a way to clear their entries and
>> start over, relying on them to guess that refreshing the page might work
>> isn't the way to go about it anyway. That's what the Reset button is for:
>>
>> <input type="reset" name="reset" value="Reset">
>
> Unfortunately in this scenario, the client is rendering the screen
> independant of what the server is telling it to display,
>
> e.g. I have an aspx page telling Firefox that a radio button is
> selected and Firefox changes the item, leaving any text on the page out
> of synch with the selection.

That wasn't apparent from your example, which had no preselected radio
button.

True, if you specify the button to be checked, Firefox ought to display
it as specified in the code.

Javascript in the onload handler does work. If you have text on the page
that synchs with the user's current choice, doesn't that imply that
you're using Javascript?

Still: why do you think users will be refreshing the page while in the
middle of filling out a form?

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