[SalesForce] Why does the url not change on the visual force page

I am experiencing an odd behavior on my visual force pages and i would like to know if others have experienced this. I have a multistep wizard where several visual force pages use one controller. On the very first visual force page say /apex/vf1 there is a command link button which on clicking does some processing on the controller and does a page reference forward to vfpage2. At this point the vfpage2 gets loaded on the browser but the url still says /apex/vf1 on the browser. Now i hit next command link button on vfpage2 which does processing on the controller and does a page reference forward to vfpage3. Now vfpage 3 loads on the browser and the url changes to /apex/vfpage2. So the url on the browser changes one step after the page is loaded and the user clicks a button on it. Can you guys explain why? My assumption is that the url should change on page on load on the browser..

Best Answer

I suspect the PageReference objects you are returning have setRedirect as false. This is a server side redirect that preserves the wizard viewstate between post back requests and can only occur with a shared controller.

If setRedirect were true then a client side redirect would result in an HTTP GET request to the subsequent page and the URL would change. You would also lose any view state that had been accumulated.

When you perform subsequent POST requests back on a page it advances to the previous visualforce page as that is where the POST is being sent to.

E.g.

GET request to /apex/vf1
COMMAND button performs a POST to /apex/vf1
Salesforce responds with the new HTML, still on /apex/vf1. The new content will send a POST request to /apex/vf2
COMMAND button performs a POST to /apex/vf2, Browser URL changes to /apex/vf2.
Salesforce responds with the new HTML that will send a POST request to /apex/vf3
...

Revised Answer

While the question still does not provide sufficient context, actual markup nor an iframe I believe what you are attempting is to navigate an iframe from a link which is outside of the frame.

Here is a fully functional demonstration of performing this action, hopefully it gets you started with modifying your own markup to do the same if this is indeed what you're after.

<html>
    <body>
        <div>
            <p>Links</p>
            <a href="http://www.salesforce.com" target="theFrame">Salesforce.com</a><br />
            <a href="http://www.dell.com" target="theFrame">Dell.com</a><br />
            <a href="/apex/YourVFPageName" target="theFrame">Same Domain VF Page</a><br />
        </div>
        <div>
            <p>Frame</p>
            <iframe name="theFrame" src="#" width="800" height="400"></iframe>
        </div>
    </body>
</html>

Original Answer

In the page markup displayed within the iframe you need to target the links to use the parent element. This can be done a few ways:

<base target="_parent" /> will target every link in the page to open in the parent frame.

<a href="#" target="_parent">Link</a> will target just this link to open in the parent frame.

[SalesForce] Issue with command link on visual force pages

Posted actual answer from comments :

I was missing the name attribute on the param tag and it was throwing me weird results. So bottom line is that i used one form and parameter name to resolve the issue.

Best Answer

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Revised Answer

Original Answer

[SalesForce] Issue with command link on visual force pages

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