GWT History question

What is consider as a good design rega开发者_开发问答rding back/forward project capabilities. I mean - uses are able to navigate through the application only via back/forward browser buttons or to have also and back buttons in the application , is it a good practice to mix it (browser back and application back buttons) ? Or GWT History is good enough to be the only navigator in the application?

I will be glad to hear different opinions and approaches.

Thanks

GWT history management is a way to make different states of your application matches with the address URL and use listeners to be notified of URL changes.

This is a technical thing that allow standard back/forward to work in a meaningfull way.

Now we speak about a design, does a "back"/"forward" button really usefull inside your application?

Well this depend of what your application do. if it is some sort of wizard with a set of steps, then yes you'll have back/forward buttons in your application.

If this a more conventionnal UI, no you will not have/back forward. You will have link/button sending the user to new views, and some sort of main navigation allowing to go to any view/screen the user want to. Only support for back/forward would be using the browser only.

My perspective is that GWT History is used to mimic the already-existing features of your application. So when you perform actions, they leave a trail that the user can trace back.

As per the web application secenerio,It is more preferable to navigate through the browser back and forward buttons.Why to reinvent the wheel?

As all browser supported by this facility. I am also working on a large application supported by the gwt.History in the system is managed by the History token.You can have a look on it from here.

I am working from last two years with history management of gwt ans it is working fine. You can have your navigation systems for the inner panel navigation requirement.But for the browser I suggest you to use its own facility.

1. I wouldn't have a separate back/forward functionality in your app, since people are used to using browser's back/forward buttons. This would not add any function, just confuse people.

2. GWT History wraps browsers' history functionality so it will perform exactly like browsers native history functionality.

Browser-based history all the way.

1. If you only support internal history (and don't support browser-based history), when your users navigate back the browser will take them away from your application.
2. If you support both internal and browser-based history your users probably will not be clear of the effect of pressing internal or browser-based back key.

I cannot think of an instance where a web-application supports internal and browser-based history navigation.

The closest I can think of is when breadcrumbs are provided, but these relate to only a few types of application.