Navigation reload: Mention that soft reloads don't fire popstate

[noamr]

MDN URL

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigation/reload

What specific section or headline is this issue about?

No response

What information was incorrect, unhelpful, or incomplete?

See title, it should be noted that soft reloads (navigation.reload / location.reload) don't fire the popstate event.

What did you expect to see?

See above

Do you have any supporting links, references, or citations?

No response

Do you have anything more you want to share?

No response

MDN metadata

Page report details

• Folder: en-us/web/api/navigation/reload
• MDN URL: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigation/reload
• GitHub URL: https://github.com/mdn/content/blob/main/files/en-us/web/api/navigation/reload/index.md
• Last commit: d0e6d8d
• Document last modified: 2025-02-02T01:20:45.000Z

[kb42]

Is anyone else working on this? If not, I can take this issue

[noamr]

Is anyone else working on this? If not, I can take this issue

Go for it

[hamishwillee]

Hi @noamr

According to popstate event

The popstate event of the Window interface is fired when the active history entry changes while the user navigates the session history. It changes the current history entry to that of the last page the user visited or, if history.pushState() has been used to add a history entry to the history stack, that history entry is used instead.

Presumably a reload() simply loads the same page so the user hasn't traversed the history - there's no "pop". So why would anyone expect popstate to fire?

If it is reasonable that people might expect it to fire, of course we should add a note. Just wondering if that is true. If it needs to happen I will take care of it as part of #42254

[noamr]

@hamishwillee
I think people who use popstate might be surprised that it's fired for some soft navigations and not for others.
This is OK, but a note can help with the confusion.

[hamishwillee]

Thanks @noamr. People get surprised by lots of things - if we documented everything that things don't do we'd have lots of cruft. It doesn't do any harm in this case IMO, but not a habit to get into.

What I've done is added the note in #42303 but pointed out my issue with this. If the reviewer is strongly against then we'll close this issue - otherwise it will go in.

[noamr]

Thanks @noamr. People get surprised by lots of things - if we documented everything that things don't do we'd have lots of cruft. It doesn't do any harm in this case IMO, but not a habit to get into.

What I've done is added the note in #42303 but pointed out my issue with this. If the reviewer is strongly against then we'll close this issue - otherwise it will go in.

SG! I actually don't remember the discussion that had led me to opening the issue in the first place..