detect back button click in browser [duplicate]

Question

I have to detect if a user has clicked back button or not. For this I am using

window.onbeforeunload = function (e) { } 

It works if a user clicks back button. But this event is also fired if a user click F5 or reload button of browser. How do I fix this?

Answer 1

So as far as AJAX is concerned...

Pressing back while using most web-apps that use AJAX to navigate specific parts of a page is a HUGE issue. I don't accept that 'having to disable the button means you're doing something wrong' and in fact developers in different facets have long run into this problem. Here's my solution:

window.onload = function () {     if (typeof history.pushState === "function") {         history.pushState("jibberish", null, null);         window.onpopstate = function () {             history.pushState('newjibberish', null, null);             // Handle the back (or forward) buttons here             // Will NOT handle refresh, use onbeforeunload for this.         };     }     else {         var ignoreHashChange = true;         window.onhashchange = function () {             if (!ignoreHashChange) {                 ignoreHashChange = true;                 window.location.hash = Math.random();                 // Detect and redirect change here                 // Works in older FF and IE9                 // * it does mess with your hash symbol (anchor?) pound sign                 // delimiter on the end of the URL             }             else {                 ignoreHashChange = false;                }         };     } } 

As far as Ive been able to tell this works across chrome, firefox, haven't tested IE yet.