Preserving State

Hi All,
Heres a problem I'm having. I have 2 variables on a page, both hidden. Ones called state1 and ones called state2. Upon loading the page these 2 hidden fields are set to "NOCHANGE". When the user clicks on the submit button or a link on the page the state2 should change to "CHANGED", using a javascript onclick statement. In the javascript, I do this :
document.result.state2.value = "CHANGED";
(result is the form's name). After that I put in an alert button, it says that the value has indeed changed to "CHANGED" but viewing the source code still has "NOCHANGE" in there and coming back to the page it says that the hidden field is still "NOCHANGED". Why is this? And is there a way of changing the value to what I want (i.e. CHANGED so as when I return to the page)?
The reason I do this is because first in the page is the way it should be. Clicking on submit or a link should make them (the hidden fields) different so that the page knows when the user has returned to the page using the Back button or if he/she has just entered the page anew. A javascript checks the value to see if the 2 are different and if so should then refresh the page. Can anyone give me a hand on this one? Thanks in advice.
Rob

When you do a "view source" the browser will show what what it received from the server and will not reflect any chages to the DOM field values made dynamically on the client side.
Upon the resubmit, the server is resubmitting the page as it knows it on the server, again not reflecting any changes you made to the field values.
In order to maintain such state across the requests, you'll need the help of an active server component, such as JSP, to use the submitted fields values as the initial values of the field the second time around.
hth,
bear

Or you can consider using cookies is they suit your requirement -
http://www.geocities.com/technofundo/tech/js/jscookies.html
HTH,
- Manish