I can only very slightly see the purpose behind angering your users so you can keep the results fresh - but there are better ways to to it - such as polling the server in the background rather than invalidating the session and forcing the users have to re-enter their search terms every few minutes. It's even worse when you invalidate the back button and I can't see my old search results, or if you provide a button that says "return to results" that takes me to enter my search terms for the 10th time.

Sorry about the rant, but it's quite annoying. I can understand doing it unwittingly by accident, but when you're viewing data that doesn't change frequently from someone as "professional" as company X (whom provided the app that prompted this post), it's completely unacceptable, and borders on absurd (on the absurd side of the line). The amount of data that will change frequently enough to justify keeping it that fresh is only very small. When I click on a link to find more information about it and come back 5 minutes later, I shouldn't have to search again, much less re-enter my search terms.

Have you found any valid uses for this? And again, I want to reiterate - I can understand if you want to keep the view updated - but there are MUCH better ways to do it. Even many of the travel sites use it to their detriment (IMO), and I don't understand it.

Update: I've taken out the specific references in this for three reasons:
1) It occurred to me that it is quite unfair to criticize the implementation of an application when I haven't seen it and don't know for sure what I insinuated about it is true.
2) It is also unfair to criticize a specific product after only using it for a couple of minutes.
3) I didn't want to spread rumors about the cost of something when I wasn't completely sure.

Basically, I went a little off the deep end and this is my attempt to come up for air =). My apologies to anyone offended that I took it down (or put it up in the first place). But really, the essence of the post remains in tact.

Hey! Why don't you make your life easier and subscribe to the full post or short blurb RSS feed? I'm so confident you'll love my smelly pasta plate wisdom that I'm offering a no-strings-attached, lifetime money back guarantee!

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