Changes don't show up when using forward/back buttons in IE

Updated 2010-03-12 | Filed under OnWeb | PDF

Question

I'm using Internet Explorer, and sometimes it seems like the changes from my EQL OnWeb session aren't saved correctly, because if I start a new session, I don't see them. Then, sometime later, the changes show up again. Am I doing something wrong?

Answer

When using OnWeb, changes from one session only become visible to other sessions after a session ends, and only if your session is using the ?save-on-close=1 flag (which is the default if you use the OnWeb link from the Web View main menu).

Exactly when the session ends is not completely obvious, especially in Internet Explorer. For example, if you click the Back or Forward browser navigation buttons, the browser will change pages and your OnWeb session will disappear - but it is actually still running in the background! That means the EQL server doesn't know you're done with it, so it doesn't save your changes.

The best ways to ensure that your session is completely shut down when using Internet Explorer are to either:

  1. Build a "quit" button into your application and make sure users use it to exit; or:

  2. Completely close your browser window when done with OnWeb, rather than using the forward/back buttons to navigate. If you're embedding OnWeb into your web site, one way to encourage your users to do this is to pop up OnWeb in an entirely separate window using Javascript.

Other (non Internet Explorer) web browsers do not seem to have this problem.

Note that even when this happens, your data has not actually been lost. Eventually IE will terminate your session and save your changes. Even if your computer crashes and the session times out, the data is already on our server and won't be lost.

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