Can GWT explicitly detect browser back/forward buttons (not just infer from history)

Question

Suppose a GWT app goes to #a then #b then #a then the user presses back and I detect #b in the history.

Now I get a history event "#a". Is there any way to tell if the user pressed forward or back?

I might care because the page for #a might be a form and I might remember in memory that the second #a has some unsaved data type in the form while the first #a has not!

Thoughts?

Answer 1

No, that's technically not possible.

(you could use the HTML5 History API – pushState and onpopstate – but GWT has no built-in support)