I didn't know that was something a website could do. But on the main page (that is, '/'), I can't seem to refresh. The refresh button in Firefox doesn't work. Ctrl+r, ctrl+shift+r, and f5 all do not work. Selecting the url and hitting enter doesn't work. I haven't tried in any other browsers. Is this supposed to be a feature?
I'm guessing some folks are going to wonder why I'd ever want or need to refresh. Sometimes, one server or community seems to get "stuck". I'll load my main page (I default to "subscribed/new"), scroll for a bit, and then suddenly the one community gets "unstuck" and starts flooding my feed with (all?) posts from that one community. When it does that, it makes the feed basically unusable. I can't expand out images during that time (and even the thumbnails usually go away on posts for some reason.) The posts move down the page fast enough that I can't read titles or click comment links. It's... a problem.
If I could refresh, I'd have an easy workaround. But right now, the best workaround I've found is to copy the url, open a new tab, paste the url into the new tab, and close the original malfunctioning tab. (Ctrl+l, ctrl+c, ctrl+n, ctrl+v, enter, ctrl+pageup, ctrl+w.)
And, yes, if the issue I describe above would be resolved, that would go a long way toward making it less necessary to allow refreshing. But it's the principle of the thing, you know? Is a web app breaking basic browser functionality considered acceptable? Is being unable to refresh the main page intended?
Now, the instance I'm on is still on an older version. (Specifically 0.17.4.) If any of this is addressed in later versions, that would be awesome news.
Edit: In retrospect, it seems I should have done more experimentation before posting this. Now that I'm trying things, refreshing is working. It takes a second or three to start refreshing, though. I guess my theory at this point is that when I'm experiencing the issue mentioned above, that few seconds turns into a much longer amount of time. (Minutes, I think.) And I just never waited long enough to see that refresh eventually does work. I guess that kindof invalidates much of what I said here, but in case others have insight, I'll leave this post up.