A mechanism that supports navigation in a manner that state information for certain web pages will be preserved through the completion of a task. While at that original return web page, the host computing system receives a request to perform a task in which the browser is to navigate to other web pages as part of completing the task. As the host computing system navigates the browser to each of these web pages, the host computing system stores the application state for each of the subsequent task-oriented web pages, along with a copy of the application state of the return web page. Once the task is complete, the host computing system uses the copy of the application state, rather than the original of the application state, to return the browser to the return web page.