My computer is running Mac OS X 10.5.6 with Safari as the web browser. When returning to a previous page on a particular bank website a message appears saying “Are you sure you want to send a form again”. I appreciate that this is normal and part of the use protection process. However, recently the message has started appearing multiple times, requiring me to keep clicking the “Send” button. As this bank website is constantly updated, it requires frequent fresh updates involving going back to pages. As you can imagine, this message is getting quite frustrating. How can I fix this problem?

The reason that the “Are you sure you want to send a form again” message appears is related to the way in which the website has been written. On certain pages within the bank website you likely needed to enter some details into a text field, click a button on the web page, or engage in some other interaction with a form element on the page (such as a radio button, check box, etc). A different web page is loaded in response to the interaction that you have made with the form elements on that page. For example, you may click a button to load the details for a particular share market stock. The way in which form elements work is they send details of which form element has been selected in a separate data stream to the normal web page. This means if you wish to go back to those pages (by clicking the browser’s Back button) then this form data stream must be re-sent so that the web page can be loaded with the relevant data. This is why whenever you click the “Back” button the message about resending the form data appears.

However, as you have mentioned, this message should only appear once rather than repeatedly, as you have been experiencing. There are a few reasons why the message may be appearing multiple times. The first is that there is something wrong with the way your web browser is rendering the web page. Each web browser renders web pages differently, as they use a different rendering engine. So, if a web page has been designed and tested for Internet Explorer or Firefox it may not work correctly within Safari. To test this theory, we should check whether the problem persists in a different web browser. Download and install Firefox (www.mozilla.com/firefox) which is a free, alternative web browser. This is the web browser which I recommend to most people, as it has been around for a very long time and is also quite consistent about how it renders web pages. Once you have installed Firefox, visit the bank’s website and check whether the same problem occurs. If the problem does not occur while using Firefox, it seems that there is an issue between the bank’s website and Safari. In this situation there is little that you can do except continue to use Firefox to access the website, although you may wish to get in touch with the people that maintain the website and enquire whether Safari compatibility will be available at some point in the future.

In the event that the problem still occurs when using Firefox we may conclude that the problem is with the website itself. However, before jumping to this conclusion we should try some different experiments. First, try using Safari or Firefox on another Mac computer (apart from your own) to see whether the problem occurs. This will allow you to determine whether the issue is related to your computer or not. Should you find that the problem does not occur on the other computer, check to see whether there are any configuration differences between the browsers in the different computers or the network settings. It is fairly unlikely that this situation would occur, as there is not much computer-specific that could be causing this problem. In the more likely event that the problem also occurs on the different computer then you should, for the sake of completeness, check whether the problem occurs on a Windows-based computer using the latest version of Internet Explorer. If all works well in Internet Explorer it seems that the website has been designed to only function properly with Internet Explorer rather than other browsers. In this situation it would be worthwhile contacting the site operators to confirm this point and check whether there is any way around this issue for persons who do not use a Windows-based computer.

Where the problem still occurs on a Windows-based computer with Internet Explorer, this indicates a potential problem with the website itself. It seems fairly unlikely that this would be the case, given the site is a fairly popular and high traffic website which should have problems such as this already reported as an issue and subsequently fixed. As such, it would be worthwhile contacting the website operators to determine whether this is a known issue and to check for a possible resolution.

If you find that there is no way around this problem, you may need to take a more manual route as a workaround. Generally clicking the Back button on web pages which submit form data is not the best idea, as it results in the form data being resubmitted without the user being able to see exactly what is being submitted. In the case of some websites, which allow you to input credit card details for online payment for example, this could result in the payment being sent again. Therefore, a much safer method is to go back into the original webpage then complete the form submission again manually. This will get around the problem you are experiencing. That said, it could be a bit more cumbersome than you are used to, particularly the process of getting back to the form submission webpage. However, this should be relatively easy as the webpage that appears as a result of submitting the form should have a link back to the original website, to make this navigation easier.