Back button behaviour

[SoundTheSirens]

If you're in a part of the site with the old-style list of threads - like here, or AIBU - using the back button to return to the list from a thread takes you back to the point on the list where you left it.

But if you're somewhere where the topics appear in the newer format, like Relationships or Telly Addicts, the back button takes you to the top of the list of topics every time, no matter how far down the list you'd scrolled before opening a thread.

I find the latter really irritating! Sometimes you might not have been on the site, or a particular section, for a few days so you want to scroll a fair way down to see what's been posted recently, but if you then open any thread and decide to go back after reading it, you're pinged right back to the top of the list again,

Is there any way the back button could work consistently and take you back to the point you were previously at when you opened a thread? (For completeness I use the desktop site, variously on Edge / Firefox / Safari and the back button behaviour is the same regardless of browser.)

Hi OP

Can you just let us know what device and browser you're using to access the site?

Sometimes it’s a laptop, sometimes it’s an iPad, always the desktop version. If it’s a laptop then I’m either using Firefox (home) or MS Edge (work); iPad it’s Safari. It doesn’t matter which it is, the back button always returns to the previous place on old-style topic lists and always jumps to the top of topic lists on new-style format.

Hi there @SoundTheSirens. We've had a look into this and the back button is behaving as it's meant to on these threads. We will look at whether there's anything we can do about it in the future but it definitely won't be a quick fix and to be honest, we're not certain it can be changed at all. In the meantime, opening the threads in new windows would be one way around this. Sorry we can't be more help on this occasion.

Thanks for the response anyway @HebeMumsnet, I'll just continue to grumble every time I go back from a thread to a new-style topic list!