The standard application frame supports navigation between screens with Back/Forward buttons of the web browser. This feature is disabled by default. If you want to use the navigation with Back/Forward, simply add:

<servlet>
  <servlet-name>VaadinUI</servlet-name>
  <servlet-class>com.sibvisions.rad.ui.vaadin.server.VaadinServlet</servlet-class>
 
  ...
 
  <init-param>
    <param-name>Application.navigation</param-name>
    <param-value>true</param-value>
  </init-param>
</servlet>

to the web.xml.

Above setting is for the whole application and for all users. If you want finer control, it's possible to en-/disable the navigation in your application code, programmatically. A common use-case is that you en-/disable the navigation per user. To do this, create your own application (see CustomApplication class).

Use following code snippet:

@Override
public void initUserRoles(String[] pRoles)
{
    super.initUserRoles(pRoles);
 
    ((WebMenu)getMenu()).setNavigationEnabled(hasRole("admin"));
}

to en-/disable navigation.

It's important that you en-/disable the navigation in initUserRoles, because it's not possible to en-/disable the navigation after the menu was loaded.