I think this is a function of the site itself, not Chrome.  Less-"smart" sites, like this bug tracker, duplicate the way you want (they don't reload).  For example, you can type in the textfield here, duplicate, and see that both tabs maintain your typing.

However, when the new tab is created and shown, we must fire various events to the page to indicate that (per W3C spec, AIUI).  The page is responding to those by resetting/reloading various things.

So I think Chrome is already doing most of what you want but our hands are tied to prevent this behavior.

That was a rather quick "WontFix". Can we talk first, please?

Where in the spec are all browsers constrained to do what the web page says and not the user? (classic conflict of interest, yet extensions exist and the API is not mandated by W3C)

What can be accomplished already by extensions? (workarounds, partial solutions)

Does anyone know of a browser/project that DOES support this kind of user control over how pages load? (where to turn because I'm a human being with this want)

Thank you.

Blink folks, I don't know what the right component is.  Can you triage over to who would know about what events (e.g. onpageshow) we might fire on tab duplication and what specs cover those?

Thanks for looking into it. I understand that duplicating, as a workaround for bad websites, can break those same sites (e.g. shared storage like cookies). Back buttons sure can.

And since the specificity I'm interested in includes the JavaScript state, maybe the correct answer to this issue *is* some third-party virtualization project.

Apologies for "I'm a human being" - that was dumb.

This probably could find a corresponding state in the lifecycle API?

Shubhie: do you think you could triage this? (While this one's a bit vague reg: how it should work and we may not have bandwidth to tackle this right away)