[MEX] M5 - Make the browser "back" button function smoothly with the new UX
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Authored By

	ArthurTaylor
	Jan 13 2026, 12:19 PM

Description

Pressing the browser "back" button or swiping backwards in the current MEX implementation does not function as expected for a good web browsing experience - the user agent is redirected to the previous URL (which might be a search page, another item, or a different website entirely).

Processes browser navigation events (presumably using the History API) to handle them in a meaningful way for the MEX UX.

Acceptance Criteria

pressing / swiping back from a MEX modal closes the modal
pressing / swiping back from the main item view navigates to the previous page in the browser
the behaviour is covered by tests as far as possible.

Details

Other Assignee: Sadiya.Mohammed_WMDE

Related Changes in Gerrit:

	Subject	Repo	Branch	Lines +/-
	Close MEX modal on browser back	mediawiki/extensions/Wikibase	master	+50 -9

Customize query in gerrit

Related Objects
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Status	Assigned	Task
Open	None	T394621 [MEX] Mobile Editing Experience of Items Project
Open	None	T415326 [MEX] M5 - additional functionality and clean up
Open	AudreyPenven_WMDE	T414454 [MEX] M5 - Make the browser "back" button function smoothly with the new UX

Event Timeline

ArthurTaylor created this task.Jan 13 2026, 12:19 PM

Restricted Application added a subscriber: Aklapper. · View Herald TranscriptJan 13 2026, 12:19 PM

ArthurTaylor added a parent task: T394621: [MEX] Mobile Editing Experience of Items Project.Jan 13 2026, 12:19 PM

ShivaanshSingh subscribed.Jan 13 2026, 1:39 PM

Would adding deep-linking to edit modals help with this: T414456: [MEX] M5 -Support deep-linking to edit modals inside MEX

Arian_Bozorg renamed this task from [MEX] Make the browser "back" button function smoothly with the new UX to [MEX] M5 - Make the browser "back" button function smoothly with the new UX.Jan 23 2026, 12:56 AM

Arian_Bozorg edited parent tasks, added: T415326: [MEX] M5 - additional functionality and clean up; removed: T394621: [MEX] Mobile Editing Experience of Items Project.

@Arian_Bozorg good question. I'm not really sure. @Lucas_Werkmeister_WMDE expressed some skeptiscism about this and T414455, which I think is fair. It might make sense to think about all three tickets as a group and decide what experience we want to have before working on any of them individually.

Arian_Bozorg moved this task from MEX Incoming column to Ready for Task Time (Story Writing) on the Wikidata-Omega board.Mar 31 2026, 4:14 PM

In T414454#11547893, @ArthurTaylor wrote:

@Arian_Bozorg good question. I'm not really sure. @Lucas_Werkmeister_WMDE expressed some skeptiscism about this and T414455, which I think is fair. It might make sense to think about all three tickets as a group and decide what experience we want to have before working on any of them individually.

Story time note: we would like to try to implement just this task first, without T414455 or T414456. The implementation probably use the History API, but perhaps without actually changing the URL as you move through the modal.