This appears to happen on the desktop site as well - I assume it is not related specifically to MobileFrontend

From saper in MediaWiki-General:
awjr: just tried with opera on windows and get expected behaviour - back gives me previous random article
same with IE9
er
IE7
don't have chrome on win32 now

I also tried with FF on OS X, and it behaves as expected.

Chrome and Safari on OS X are affected by the unexpected behavior.

Where's the random button?

I don't see this in the desktop site with firefox. Browsers based on webkit seem affected.

philinje wrote:

The Random function is under the W or in the menu when you opt-in to the Beta mobile site:

bit.ly/wmoptin

Works for me on bit.ly/wmoptin with a desktop browser (Firefox 17) and accessing four random articles - going back works.

Still very much broken.
To be clear this is on desktop and only effects Chrome (Version 23.0.1271.101) and Safari - not Firefox.

Browser history is sacred.

Still broken in latest Chrome. Does anyone have an ideas? This is really odd behaviour.

I guess this is because Special:Random is actually a link that redirects
So Main Page -> Special:Random -> Special:Random
Clicking back will thus of course take you to Main Page on certain browsers as it will assume these 2 resources are the same.

• Bug 52128 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

For Chrome also exists T34646 with "upstream", not sure which task merging in that situation or leaving both open to have one for safari

This appears to have been fixed on Chrome, testing Windows 7 Chrome Version 60.0.3112.90 (Official Build) (64-bit).

PrimeHunter also confirms a fix in Chrome, so I'm removing Chrome from the summary.