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Ben Halpern
Ben Halpern

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Is there any way to detect if a user "can go back" in PWAs (desktop PWA most specifically)

Firstly, thanks for the discussion yesterday:

I took the feedback and made a couple PRs:

Add PWA target blank functionality #2921

What type of PR is this? (check all applicable)

  • [ ] Refactor
  • [x] Feature
  • [ ] Bug Fix
  • [ ] Documentation Update

Description

Adds target="_blank" to anchor tags if the page is being rendered by a desktop PWA. It seems like this is the appropriate functionality for a computer device, but touch screens should keep opening in the pseudobrowser.

Quick solution while we experiment with PWA functionality.

Now I'm curious about another PWA feature I haven't been able to track down.

We've implemented navigation buttons right into the DEV desktop PWA like such:

team pink mode 💕

They work easily enough using window.history.back(); but right now, they have no "on/off" state because I'm not sure how to determine of a user "can go back or forward". I know that this is not available in the typical window API but given that we're responsible for the back button ourselves in PWA I was wondering if there is anything exposed that would help determine this?

Top comments (13)

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ceresnam profile image
Michal Čerešňa

you can attach custom object when calling history.pushState()

We solved it with storing 'depth' parameter. Each time user goes down we increase it by +1.

Then you can decide if the back button should be on/off with history.state.depth > 0

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yaser profile image
Yaser Al-Najjar

I'm not sure this feature would be really helpful since I'm using the PWA in my phone (Android) and I never feel the need to use the back button (and of course, same goes to the desktop website).

If I wanna go back I just press the DEV logo, and that's pretty convenient!

The great part about DEV is that it has a non-dense site map... just the home page which leads to different places (articles, settings, notifications, DMs).

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thefern profile image
Fernando B 🚀

Back button does work in Android PWA. Just a habit on Android to use back button lol, is a lot closer to my thumb than the dev button.

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stereobooster profile image
stereobooster • Edited

Maybe you are looking for window.history.length? UPD: just double checked, it doesn't subtract the number when you use back button :/

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kognise profile image
Kognise

Maybe there's a way to do some programming magic and get that to work?

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Between that and other persistence like localStorage etc, there is probably a technically possible way to make it happen. We only have to worry about on-site situations because this is for the standalone app.

This is a pretty generalizeable situation so if anyone wanted to build a library for this I'm all for it! 😄

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zcdunn profile image
Zack Dunn • Edited

There's a proposal to add field to the Web Manifest to hint that navigation should be shown that would work across devices. Here's a better thread. In the meantime, there is a CSS media query that you could use to determine when to show your navigation.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

I might be mistaken, but it seems like minimal-ui mode doesn't work on the desktop. It looks like standalone no matter which I use.

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jaakidup profile image
Jaaki

Right now for this issue of deciding whether a user can go back, I essentially hide the back button when the current route is "/" (root)
As I'm assuming the user enters via the root route and then navs forwards, this seems to work.

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iamandrewluca profile image
Andrei Luca • Edited

I had also to add this type of navigation for a site that was used inside an iframe inside of a browser extension.

Check this example. I had to track navigation myself.

codesandbox.io/s/busy-pascal-04db6
codesandbox.io/s/small-leaf-8f9kk

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okbrown profile image
Orlando Brown • Edited

I have come a across this issue before in another project.

On document.referrer it holds the previous page, if it contains a URL with dev.to you can then use window.history.back() (other wise prevent it going back as to not leave the page/app unless required)

Thing I can't remember is, ain't there a history list API that returns back all the previous pages you were at?

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aniljoey profile image
Sarve Bhavantu Sukhina

ihc.io/connect/tinker/smartrec/

I tried it like so. Seems to work.

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luisdanielmesa profile image
Luis Mesa

Don't.

Don't use standalone or fullscreen if you want navigation buttons.