I do it a lot with no problem.

Start Firefox in Safe Mode {web Link} by holding down the <Shift>
(Mac Options) key, and then starting Firefox. Is the problem still there?

I do it a lot also and it works with all sites except the one I cited.

Your suggestion for Safe Mode did not solve it.

Same situation in Firefox and Chrome for me.

The site has a color rule for links and for links that are being hovered, but does not have a rule specifying a different color for links that were visited, so those are just colored the same as unvisited links:

a {
    text-decoration: none;
    color: #1e79a7;
}

a:hover,
a.TextColor:hover,
a:hover .TextColor {
    color: #ff0084;
}

If you previous saw two colors, you might have been overriding page colors, but that leads to lots of other problems, so a better workaround -- if the site isn't interesting in updating its CSS -- is an add-on. For example (I haven't tried these myself):

• Visited: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/visited/ (use its Options button on the Add-ons page, Extensions section, if it doesn't color the visited links automatically)

• If you don't want to show visited link colors in menus or other places where it might be distracting, you could create a custom style rule for the problem site(s) and apply it using either the Stylish extension or a userContent.css file. It would take a little time to develop and test that.

Actually, upon closer reading, if your link colors change when you reload the page, then you probably are already overriding page colors and the question is whether Firefox is updating the visited status in a cached copy of the page when you go back to it.

I don't have time to test that right now, but someone else could try to figure out why yours is not updating on that one site. If you haven't already, please: How to clear the Firefox cache.

jscher2000, I cleared the Firefox cache and tested what you wrote about for the links. When I hit the Back button, the link is in the magenta color which one gets when hovering over it, but that's because my pointer is still at the top of the browser window. Upon moving it the link is still in the bold blue Unread state.

Still hoping for a fix.

I would use a custom style rule to change the color of visited links. Here's an example, along with an attached screenshot showing the effect:

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);

@-moz-document url("http://typedrawers.com/") {
  #Content .Discussions a:visited{color:#551A8B !important;}
}

That color is the Firefox default color for visited links, but you can change it to another color if you prefer. This site is useful for discovering the hex codes for various different colors: http://www.visibone.com/colorlab/

In the screenshot I'm using the Stylish extension to apply the rule. You also can create or edit a userContent.css file if you don't want to install any more extensions, but Stylish makes it easy to preview and experiment.

You can install Stylish from the Add-ons site: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/stylish/

A new "S" icon should appear on the toolbar. Click that, then Write new style, then Blank style, and in the compose area next to line #1, paste the above rule. If you right-click the tab and move it to a new window, then resize it to a small panel (as in the screen shot), it's easy to see the results of modifying and previewing the rule on the page behind it.

jscher2000, thanks for that info about Stylish; it's an excellent workaround and I have implemented it.

Without Stylish installed, I'm assuming because the unread posts are in a bolder weight but likely the same color as the read links because the read links are the same color but in a lighter weight of the font. So then the true solution is for the site to fix its CSS setup. Is that correct?

I assume the current site design pleases its operators...

I actually didn't notice a difference in weight (boldness?) between visited and unvisited links. Probably I wasn't checking that closely because I was only thinking about the color.

OK, what I've now discovered with Stylish in use is I've enabled a circular problem. While it changes the link color initially, after hitting the Back button the "New" symbol is still there, and when someone makes a new comment to an old post, it is the new color rather than the original blue.

So it seems the site owner needs to step up and fix something although he has claimed to me in private emails that it is not a problem at his end. I guess I'll just have to live with it although I know it wasn't that way before he took over management of the site. In fairness to him, no other user of the site has publicly complained to him so maybe it's something with my system.

Hmm, I didn't test the site logged in, so there might be some slight differences from what I saw when I tested.

Does the site use a session id parameter (for example, sid=longtext) in the URL when you're logged in?

@jscher2000

No; typedrawers.com is it. I've been watching it and the unread posts always show up with a Bold name and then after they have been read should change to a Regular weight with no color change. They don't change unless I reload the page.

I thought perhaps having Suitcase (Mac) running as my font manager might be a contributing factor since it does affect fonts on other sites sometimes but it doesn't affect typedrawers.com.

BTW, in rereading my prior reply I noticed that I wrote "...after hitting the Back button the "New" symbol is still there..."; after the word "there" I should have noted it still also in a Bold weight. I have removed Stylish since it wasn't helping.

This doesn't seem to work in my testing

You may want to try disabling one of Firefox's more aggressive in-memory caching features to see whether it is causing the problem. Here's how:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Return/ Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste sess and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers preference and change the value from -1 to 0 (that's a zero).

(Please don't change any other similar-sounding settings to 0 or you may disable Firefox's ability to save/restore your open windows and tabs.)

This should take effect after your next reload of the index page.

I registered for the forum and I see what you mean. I belong to another forum that uses the Vanilla software but in that case, going Back to the index page automatically reloads it.

For GreasyFork, the index page is sent with these headers:

Cache-Control: private, no-cache, no-store, max-age=0, must-revalidate Expires: Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMT

For TypeDrawers, the index page is sent with these headers:

Cache-Control: private, no-cache, max-age=0, must-revalidate Expires: Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 GMT

There are two key differences:

(1) GreasyFork uses HTTPS (2) GreasyFork sends no-store for cache-control

Either is enough to ensure that the site's cache-control instructions override Firefox's "fast back-forward cache", as described in this article: https://developer.mozilla.org/Firefox/Releases/1.5/Using_Firefox_1.5_caching

This issue may well be idiosyncratic to Firefox, but assuming the site doesn't want to use HTTPS, adding no-store to the cache-control header for that index page should solve the problem of the page not reloading on Back.

Sorry about being so tardy in getting back to you about this issue.

Thanks too for registering in the forum. I am going to send the information you provided to the site owner and see if he will fix it.

I will let you know how it works out.