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I've seen that history.go() method can have two types of parameter:

see:

 http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/met_his_go.asp

But url does not working at all.

I use JavaScript console of browser to test this method but got no success.

I know that there are security issues, that you can't read history entries. You can just go back and forward.

So why this string parameter listed in all js references?

pnuts
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Vikas
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  • Which browser and version are you trying this with? – paulmorriss Jun 08 '11 at 10:27
  • Tried in Chrome latest and Mozilla firefox 4.1 or latest (whatever).. – Vikas Jun 08 '11 at 10:32
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    w3schools is _not_ "all js references". It's _one_, particularly bad reference. – Lightness Races in Orbit Jun 08 '11 at 10:33
  • FWIW, I've found http://help.dottoro.com to be a better reference. It's far from perfect but they do mention browser differences like this and offer a quick overview of browser support. http://help.dottoro.com/ljhvjqec.php is their page for `history.go()`. – Andy E Jun 08 '11 at 10:36
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    I raised this question because I see another bad reference ([here](http://www.javascriptkit.com/jsref/history.shtml)), so now learned that MDC is the best! – Vikas Jun 08 '11 at 10:37

3 Answers3

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Supplying a URL as a parameter is a non-standard feature and will not work in all browsers. Most browsers accept only a relative number, e.g. 1 or -1.

From the MDC documentation (emphasis mine):

[history.go(integerDelta)] Loads a page from the session history, identified by its relative location to the current page, for example -1 for the previous page or 1 for the next page. When integerDelta is out of bounds (e.g. -1 when there are no previously visited pages in the session history), the method doesn't do anything and doesn't raise an exception. Calling go() without parameters or with a non-integer argument has no effect (unlike Internet Explorer, which supports string URLs as the argument).

This is what happens when you use W3Schools as a learning resource ;-)

Andy E
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2

MDC at least has this note:

Note: Internet Explorer supports passing string URLs as a parameter to go(); this is non-standard and not supported by Gecko.

No idea why it is listed in many references, though.

Shadikka
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If you want to use it with an URL just use:

window.location.href="http://www.whereyouwannago.nl/";

The URL is problably still there for backwards compatibility

Chris Laarman
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