A software PM here who knows a thing or two about coding himself pointed out some issues with the preview page flow in forums. The main concerns are around back button usage and links within the text of a previewed post. Here are some data points I've collected. I have not tested with Safari.
* The back button works in Firefox over http, NOT https
* The back button works when previewing links in Firefox over https as the POST is resent when the user "backs up"
* The back button doesn't work at all in IE 6 or 7 - not from the preview screen and not from previewed links
* It's not related to TinyMCE our default wysiwyg editor; same behavior is seen with the editor disabled, in both browsers
Chatted about this with Dave B and he didn't have an immediate answer or suggestion. Things are complicated a bit by the inconsistent behavior across browsers. We tossed around the idea of saving the content in a 'preview' (i.e. invisible) state before forwarding the user to a preview screen that's GET based. This *might* help us avoid the expiring POST issue with IE. We'd have to do some testing.
Regarding the preview issue - if we cannot depend on the browser to resend the POST with the original content, how can we reliably allow the previewing of links? The user will lose their post if they click a link in the text. We could have links default to target="_new" (ideally only in preview mode). We could also render links as text but this would be confusing and frustrating as users probably *want* to test their links. If we could solve the back button problem, this might be moot, though.
Wanted throw this out there to see if anybody's run into this and/or thought about it or if I'm missing something here.
PS - yes, I do realize there is an "Edit Again" button...
