Why does iOS need to refresh when I come back to a page? Is there any way to not have an app (browser, gmail, Facebook) refresh when coming back to it?
I don't understand where this behavior comes from or why it would be desirable.
This is caused by low amount of available RAM on iOS devices (iPad Air 2 might be better with this) . You may try to lower RAM usage somehow (for example cleaning Cookies/Data in Safari, killing apps running in background, closing unused Safari Tabs etc.).