Argh! Any way to get safari to stop refreshing pages for no reason?

Agreed. It's sooo annoying!!! They should change this ASAP, because I keep using my MBP for surfing because of that
I use "open in another window" a lot, and when I go back to another page, it refreshes most of the time!!! ARRRRGGGHHH!!!!

Agree, this is really annoying... It definitely needs to be fixed.

Haven't played that much but I wonder if this affects somehow sessions...

I also found a website that doesn't display correctly, it kind of overlays some text, only one so far though

Some websites auto-refresh even when you're in the middle of reading an item.

That is annoying!

the ipad is not at fault if websites like drudgereport.com has a
meta refresh in it!

This is incredibly annoying and has nothing to do with those few sites that auto refresh. It's a deliberate choice on Apple's part and is likely done for memory management. Whether it can be fixed in a software update or is necessary in order to manage the measly 256MB of memory remains to be seen......

It's actually right behind the WiFi issues for me as the reason I'm thinking of returning mine this week.

I've experienced similar behavior, and it is extremely frustrating - but I'd like to clarify a few things:

iPad Connection: Wifi (obviously)
Net Connection: "Well Connected" infrastructure wireless network.
Event: Open a new page, browse, and navigate back to original page. The original page will refresh itself. While annoying, and can present quite a few challenges when working with web applications its not as over the top as the next scenario

ipad Connection: Wifi
Net Connction: 3G mobile hotspot.
Event: Alls the same until, if for what ever reason you DONT have a 3G signal. Then the original page attempts to refresh, never sees any reply come back from the destination site and just sits there at a white screen indefinitely. Switching back to the secondary page again triggers a refresh, and now you've got a fully useless browser until you get signal again.

Unless the 3G version doesnt refresh pages in the same way the iPad does, I think this is going to be a major annoyance for the folks who get the 3G version of the iPad.

Same question here. The auto refresh is irritating. Apple, please fix with an update.

Dumb question, what is MBP?

mac book pro

add me to those who thought this behavior was curious and didn't realize until now that it is a more common annanoyance.

If you mean leaving Safari, it's easily explainable. Safari is closed whenever the currently running app needs the ram. The iPad has very little working ram, so the system closes background apps when necessary. Note: only a few apps work in background, safari and iPod off the top of my head.

To workaround, make safari use less ram by using less open pages and don't launch ram hungry apps while you are away. This is not something you can do all the time, but for those times that it's critical that a refresh doesn't happen, you can indirectly control this.

As was stated on other replies, yet seems not to be understood...


Within the web content sent by the webpage a refresh can be assigned (from the website). The browser is just doing as it is told by the web site in this case.

I am uncertain if this is the case for the website you are addressing. But, it is just the nature of web pages and the refresh is slow enough on the iPad that you notice it. As opposed to my phone or desktop where it happens really fast, so I don't see it.

On my Mac I type something into Google and get a page of links to click. My option is set to open a link in a new window. I view what I want and then I click back on the still open window of google search results and click another. That window stays the same on the desktop as I continually refer back to it.

On the iPad I type in a Google search. I get a page of links. I set the options to open links in a new window so that I can preserve the original page of search results. It reduces to a thumbnail as the new link opens. When I press the 'box' to go back to the thumbnails, and I touch the page of Google search results, the page refreshes. It runs the search anew each time. The resulting page may be the same but it gets reloaded from scratch, from what I can see.

Message was edited by: Eddie Strauss

Did you notice when you have several web pages minimized they all refresh when changing in between them.



What about when you are one 3G 250 plan. It eats it up...could it be a dollar thing ???

I think it should be a choice by the user if the page refreshes.

Spend 99 cents for the Atomic web browser for the iPad. It's a better browser in my opinion and you'll get tabbed browsing as a bonus.