It is common, customary and expected on websites like fora that going back to a thread index page or forum index page which changes as people post, it is necessary to refresh (F5) to get the current state. I think most people just click forward, making heavy use of the tabs without maintaining a stack of DU pages, but I like to do so with consequent heavy use of the go-back function.
DU4 is (was) better. If I went from the Home page to the General Discussion index page to a thread and saw the Posts tab light up and go to My Posts and read post from there, ... I could go back (Alt left-arrow) to My Posts and it would be updated with any new posts and back to the first thread and it would be updated with new posts and back to the GD index page and it would have new replies listed at the top without having to refresh and go back to the Home page which would be automatically up-to-date with tallies of recommendations increased and order changed and new blurbs about Latest Breaking News, etc., all automatically without having to pause to find the F5 key and reload.
It meant that DU was one of the most fun and addicting sites on the web. The experience was very fluid and fast and seamless without the interruption to move the eyes and find the F5 key, press it and look back up at the screen. Also making it fast and fluid was that the My Posts and Subs tabs were dependable and automatic. If they were on, something had changed. Now I have to check or remember I forgot to F5 or not.
There are a few sites that provide similar fluidity, for example stock websites like the one I use: MarketWatch https://www.marketwatch.com/investing/index/spx where if I go to another tab or another page and go back, the ticker is updated and every so often the graph is too. The mechanism there is probably different, more server event driven (ticker updates drive the page) because it ticks even if I haven't moved from the page. DU never did and does not need to tick in the same way, though it would be interesting if it did.
There was one downside of the sleek old way at DU. If I wrote a post, I would have to be careful not to click a DU tab (Latest, Greatest, My Posts, etc.) because then I'd lose the post-in-progress because the page would refresh to a blank Reply text page. But if I used Preview, the Preview page would preserve the text.
Another side effect I'm sure is closely related is that if I was at a post of mine and clicked Edit, clicked Update, read the updated thread page, then went back to the edit page with the latest revision in the text area, I could edit it a second time and Update it and it would post fine. But now when I hit the Update the second time the duplicate checker warning appears. It is a very minor inconvenience that I only trigger rarely.
For DU I'm sure there is some HTTP request / response / event when a person returns to a page and that in the past you and Elad deployed it so effectively even if . I haven't looked at web http / javascript / CSS in a couple of years and I never used such an event myself. I don't know if cached pages get a signal or if the browser signals the server It is just the kind of thing that could have gotten dropped inadvertently in an update or possibly something a certain http server software configuration might take care of site wide, maybe as small as flipping a bit on an XML tag.
I can live with or without the changes to Reply text behaviour or update behaviour, but I really do love the svelte and lithe automatic update feature. An automatic tick or update for when pages are staying exposed would be quite a feature and would encourage people to keep DU open on the Home page or the Latest page or the GD index page. Also a Latest Posts page (counterpart to the existing Latest thread page) with little blurbs would be awesome, tick or no tick.
Anyway, it's still a great site even if it is not quite as aerodynamic as it was a week or two ago.
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