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Browser 'Back' button (Sugarcube 2.11.0)
Can someone please clear up a little puzzle. When I test my game in the browser, the 'Back' button remains inactive throughout. When I discovered this I was delighted, and assumed it was part of Sugarcube's make-up to stop people casually pressing 'Back' when they made a bad or fatal choice in the game. But on testing several other games from Twine's main page - some of which clearly use a version of Sugarcube - they all have an active browser 'Back' button when playing, and as feared I can simply hit this to return to the previous passage.
Is the inactive browser navigation unique to Sugarcube 2, or am I missing something here?
My browser is Firefox and please note I'm referring to the browser's < > buttons, not Sugarcube's 'Backwards' / 'Forwards' links.
Is the inactive browser navigation unique to Sugarcube 2, or am I missing something here?
My browser is Firefox and please note I'm referring to the browser's < > buttons, not Sugarcube's 'Backwards' / 'Forwards' links.
Comments
This in turn effected how some story formats handled their own internal History so some of those story formats (later versions of SugarCube 1.x and 2.x in particular) were changed to use a more advanced technique to track History, unless the relevant web-browser did not support it.
In a nutshell, what I want to know is will players who launch my game be able to move back and forth using the browser's nav buttons?
And is the reason I can do so with other people's game but not my own, because I'm running my game from my local hard-drive?
No. In all likelihood, those projects are using SugarCube v1 or one of the Twine v1.4 vanilla story formats, which do make use of browsers' history API.
The reason that newer story formats do not make use of browsers' history API are probably manifold—certainly true for SugarCube v2—however, the primary reason is likely that alluded to by greyelf. With Chromium v45—also used as the core of Chrome and Opera—its developers made the decision to make all uses of the browser history API throw an exception if the file was loaded locally. As there is no way around that problem, other than to not load files locally, and since it was/is unclear if other browsers would follow suit, the use of browsers' history API was largely dropped from story formats.
This depends on three things:
1. Which story format was used to create the story HTML file.
eg. All the story format's that come with the Twine 1 application (Sugarcane, Jonah, Responsive) use the web-browser's Navigation History system to handle the story's own internal History, so any story's created using these story formats will allow the reader to use the web-browser's Back and Forward buttons to undo/redo history.
2. The version of story format used to create the story HTML file.
eg. (Very) Old versions of SugarCube used the web-browser's Navigation History system, so any story's created using these versions will allow the reader to use the web-browser's Back and Forward buttons to undo/redo history.
3. The brand and/or version of the web-browser being used by the reader when running the story HTML file from their local hard-drive.
Some brands or older versions of web-browsers do not support some of the more advanced methods being use by modern story formats to track History, depending on which particular story format was used to create the story HTML file (eg. recent versions of SugarCube) this may result in the story automatically downgrading to use the web-browser's Back and Forward buttons to undo/redo history.
You have stated you are using (a recent version of) SugarCube and Firefox to create and view your story(ies), so the two reasons you can't use the web-browser's Back and Forward buttons in your stories are:
1. The version of SugarCube you are using uses a more advanced method to track history.
2. Your brand of web-browser supports the more advanced method being used.