5 ms·

I might be the minority here, but I think that using the backspace to go back is counter intuitive. In my mind backspace is to delete something, and I always wo

by ruipgil 10y ago

I might be the minority here, but I think that using the backspace to go back is counter intuitive. In my mind backspace is to delete something, and I always worry about that.

anotheryou 10y ago
Right. The change in context is not clear enough for the average user (Text Field or History) and the consequences are really bad (loss of input text).
- stephenr 10y ago
  Does Chrome not prompt you about losing un-submitted changes to a form when triggering a navigation event?
  - coldpie 10y ago
    I've never seen a browser do this. It's not clear to me it's a good idea, considering how widely input fields are used behind the scenes. Websites can request that the browser ask before navigating away, but I don't think a browser could reasonably do this automatically without getting it wrong annoyingly often.
    - stephenr 10y ago
      Safari does it, and I don't remember the last time I got a false positive.
  - lstamour 10y ago
    Most times, but not always. But it's better now at remembering what you typed if you accidentally navigate back then hit forward. I imagine in some situations I could accidentally lose form or input focus, hit backspace, and then lose everything. This could be an app that manually captures key presses with JavaScript rather than a regular input.
    - stephenr 10y ago
      Sounds like an app like that should implement some kind of 'are you sure' using onbeforeunload. There are plenty of ways to navigate away from the current page (or close the tab/window) besides hitting backspace.
  - anotheryou 10y ago
    Have to admit using FF most of the time. I only know the sophisticated websites doing it themselves. edit: chrome doesn't warn, but browsers can re-fill the input forms when you navigate forwards again. This doesn't help if the state of the website was more complex and fails to resume.
  - gruez 10y ago
    AFAIK it's done by javascript by the page.
  - fixermark 10y ago
    (1) No, it does not. (2) The concept of a "form" is less and less clear in the realm of web apps.
    - stephenr 10y ago
      Yes, it does. In the context of html in a browser, a form isn't a concept to be debated, it's a well understood element defined in the html standard. If an app chooses to not use html forms and instead uses something like contenteditable to create its own editing environment, then you likely have much bigger issues than the back button.
      - nikanj 10y ago
        I can't see how I have issues because a webapp I use wasn't perfectly coded. Remember the majority of browser users are, for a lack of a better word, browsers, not site developers. We can't affect the technology choices of the sites much, as choosing a site by tech purity instead of usefullnes is a losing proposition.
      - fixermark 10y ago
        If I have a partially filled-out form that is really the query box for a search backend, and I hit back, why at the browser level should my flow be interrupted? That content was ephemeral. It's an application-level question, not a system question. Can only be answered with semantic knowledge of the importance of the user input.
        stephenr 10y ago
        Hence we have get vs post forms.
  - DCoder 10y ago
    It does not, but the page author can use javascript to generate a confirmation dialog when you're leaving the page: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WindowEventHandlers/onbeforeunload https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WindowEvent...
  - ruipgil 10y ago
    That kind of control is in the hands of the webapp. For instance if I close this tab, where I'm typing the comment, there will be no prompt. Whereas facebook will prompt me if truly want to leave the page.
  - pfooti 10y ago
    I don't think so - I have to build javascript onBeforeUnload checks into forms manually. So: you can protect against it (mostly), but only by annoying the other users who actually do want to navigate away. It's lose-lose.
Jedd 10y ago
This is why we're all really happy that no chrom* devs contribute to the vim project.
- marcoperaza 10y ago
  Haha. I'm an avid vim user and I don't get backspace. The normal key to move back by character is in the home-row. Why would I use backspace instead? Am I missing something?
  - andrepd 10y ago
    You can use it without leaving insert mode.
    - marcoperaza 10y ago
      Huh? In insert mode, the backspace does what it does in all editors. We're referring to the behavior in normal mode, where backspace is equivalent (I think?) to 'h', or left arrow in most editors.
- supercoder 10y ago
  vim is still being developed ?
- jarnix 10y ago
  this was a behaviour in other browsers a long time before Chrome started...
cptskippy 10y ago
Backspace and Escape have always had different behavior contextually. In videogames the Escape key is almost always "back".
- ygra 10y ago
  Incidentally, Esc used to stop GIFs on a web page. Doesn't seem to do that (anymore?) in Chrome. (Oh, or Firefox, or Edge. IE is the only browser that still does that.)
  - shabble 10y ago
    IIRC there was some tedious justification for firefox about this being 'more correct' since escape would close websocket connections and pause javascripts and other fancy modern cruft sites rely on. There's an extension (SuperStop I believe?) that partly restores it if you shift-esc, but recently I've found that invasive keybindings in pages (Slack, I think?) can intercept this and stop it working. I'd really like a whitelist somewhere of what keys/combos I'd like the page to be able to catch, vs those which I expect and rely on to perform native functions, and which shouldn't be hookable (Github trying to cleverly intercept '/' and take you to the search field would be great, if / wasn't already a shortcut for searching the page, etc.
    - bratch 10y ago
      BetterStop [1] restores the old behaviour well. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/betterstop/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/betterstop/
      - Dagger2 10y ago
        The ridiculous thing here is that it's perfectly possible to make Esc stop animation without also stopping network connections. It's literally just a different argument to the stop function, and you can configure it just fine in BetterStop. But Mozilla couldn't care less, of course.
iSnow 10y ago
Backspace to navigate is bloody hell. I don't know how much work I have lost because all I wanted was to remove a couple of characters. ALT-left arrow!
ygra 10y ago
We're creatures of habit. In this case it's a behaviour that existed for two decades or so. Sure, it doesn't make much sense, but the same goes for various functions of the middle mouse button, depending on context: open new tab, close tab, open new application, close window, scroll, paste. Yet you don't see anyone changing those.
- bobajeff 10y ago
  That's because those shortcuts don't usually end up losing all user input if somehow focus got moved off of the text entry field. This is a change that should've happened a long time ago.
- Aldo_MX 10y ago
  > Yet you don't see anyone changing those. Except for (guess who?) Chromium... https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=255 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=255
  - Klathmon 10y ago
    They aren't removing middle click, they are just making it not fire off an onclick javascript event (to match the behavior of all other browsers).
crzwdjk 10y ago
This is great news. For some use cases, backspace-as-back is a disaster waiting to happen, for example, in a complex web app used in some time-critical task and that requires occasional deleting of text but can lose state or take a while to reload if you accidentally hit back. If you hit backspace without having a text field focused, the whole thing dies and needs to be reloaded and possibly checked to make sure it's still working right, while hundreds of people are anxiously watching and waiting. I have seen laptops with the backspace key physically ripped out just to prevent people from accidentally triggering its back-button behavior.
- gruez 10y ago
  >I have seen laptops with the backspace key physically ripped out just to prevent people from accidentally triggering its back-button behavior. how would you correct mistakes? with the delete button?
  - sbierwagen 10y ago
    ctrl+x
  - crzwdjk 10y ago
    Yep, delete button or else just use the default behavior of highlighting the full contents of the field to be changed. Mind you, these were dedicated machines that were specifically used for this one purpose and not something anyone would be using for, say, writing emails.
- malz 10y ago
  Giant web forms have been a usability disaster since day one. Accidental back button, link click, window close, session timeout, etc, increase the chance of a failure and need to re-enter the entire form. Whereas for at least 40 years desktop software has given you a "sure you don't want to save?" option.
  - azinman2 10y ago
    Prompts do little to prevent accidental behavior as most just get clicked through without absorbing what they're saying.
electriclove 10y ago
I suspect you are part of the silent majority. :)

by ruipgil 10y ago

I might be the minority here, but I think that using the backspace to go back is counter intuitive. In my mind backspace is to delete something, and I always worry about that.

anotheryou 10y ago

Right. The change in context is not clear enough for the average user (Text Field or History) and the consequences are really bad (loss of input text).

stephenr 10y ago
Does Chrome not prompt you about losing un-submitted changes to a form when triggering a navigation event?
- coldpie 10y ago
  I've never seen a browser do this. It's not clear to me it's a good idea, considering how widely input fields are used behind the scenes. Websites can request that the browser ask before navigating away, but I don't think a browser could reasonably do this automatically without getting it wrong annoyingly often.
  - stephenr 10y ago
    Safari does it, and I don't remember the last time I got a false positive.
- lstamour 10y ago
  Most times, but not always. But it's better now at remembering what you typed if you accidentally navigate back then hit forward. I imagine in some situations I could accidentally lose form or input focus, hit backspace, and then lose everything. This could be an app that manually captures key presses with JavaScript rather than a regular input.
  - stephenr 10y ago
    Sounds like an app like that should implement some kind of 'are you sure' using onbeforeunload. There are plenty of ways to navigate away from the current page (or close the tab/window) besides hitting backspace.
- anotheryou 10y ago
  Have to admit using FF most of the time. I only know the sophisticated websites doing it themselves. edit: chrome doesn't warn, but browsers can re-fill the input forms when you navigate forwards again. This doesn't help if the state of the website was more complex and fails to resume.
- gruez 10y ago
  AFAIK it's done by javascript by the page.
- fixermark 10y ago
  (1) No, it does not. (2) The concept of a "form" is less and less clear in the realm of web apps.
  - stephenr 10y ago
    Yes, it does. In the context of html in a browser, a form isn't a concept to be debated, it's a well understood element defined in the html standard. If an app chooses to not use html forms and instead uses something like contenteditable to create its own editing environment, then you likely have much bigger issues than the back button.
    - nikanj 10y ago
      I can't see how I have issues because a webapp I use wasn't perfectly coded. Remember the majority of browser users are, for a lack of a better word, browsers, not site developers. We can't affect the technology choices of the sites much, as choosing a site by tech purity instead of usefullnes is a losing proposition.
    - fixermark 10y ago
      If I have a partially filled-out form that is really the query box for a search backend, and I hit back, why at the browser level should my flow be interrupted? That content was ephemeral. It's an application-level question, not a system question. Can only be answered with semantic knowledge of the importance of the user input.
      - stephenr 10y ago
        Hence we have get vs post forms.
- DCoder 10y ago
  It does not, but the page author can use javascript to generate a confirmation dialog when you're leaving the page: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WindowEventHandlers/onbeforeunload https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WindowEvent...
- ruipgil 10y ago
  That kind of control is in the hands of the webapp. For instance if I close this tab, where I'm typing the comment, there will be no prompt. Whereas facebook will prompt me if truly want to leave the page.
- pfooti 10y ago
  I don't think so - I have to build javascript onBeforeUnload checks into forms manually. So: you can protect against it (mostly), but only by annoying the other users who actually do want to navigate away. It's lose-lose.

Jedd 10y ago

This is why we're all really happy that no chrom* devs contribute to the vim project.

marcoperaza 10y ago
Haha. I'm an avid vim user and I don't get backspace. The normal key to move back by character is in the home-row. Why would I use backspace instead? Am I missing something?
- andrepd 10y ago
  You can use it without leaving insert mode.
  - marcoperaza 10y ago
    Huh? In insert mode, the backspace does what it does in all editors. We're referring to the behavior in normal mode, where backspace is equivalent (I think?) to 'h', or left arrow in most editors.
supercoder 10y ago
vim is still being developed ?
jarnix 10y ago
this was a behaviour in other browsers a long time before Chrome started...

cptskippy 10y ago

Backspace and Escape have always had different behavior contextually. In videogames the Escape key is almost always "back".

ygra 10y ago
Incidentally, Esc used to stop GIFs on a web page. Doesn't seem to do that (anymore?) in Chrome. (Oh, or Firefox, or Edge. IE is the only browser that still does that.)
- shabble 10y ago
  IIRC there was some tedious justification for firefox about this being 'more correct' since escape would close websocket connections and pause javascripts and other fancy modern cruft sites rely on. There's an extension (SuperStop I believe?) that partly restores it if you shift-esc, but recently I've found that invasive keybindings in pages (Slack, I think?) can intercept this and stop it working. I'd really like a whitelist somewhere of what keys/combos I'd like the page to be able to catch, vs those which I expect and rely on to perform native functions, and which shouldn't be hookable (Github trying to cleverly intercept '/' and take you to the search field would be great, if / wasn't already a shortcut for searching the page, etc.
  - bratch 10y ago
    BetterStop [1] restores the old behaviour well. [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/betterstop/ https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/betterstop/
    - Dagger2 10y ago
      The ridiculous thing here is that it's perfectly possible to make Esc stop animation without also stopping network connections. It's literally just a different argument to the stop function, and you can configure it just fine in BetterStop. But Mozilla couldn't care less, of course.

iSnow 10y ago

Backspace to navigate is bloody hell. I don't know how much work I have lost because all I wanted was to remove a couple of characters. ALT-left arrow!

ygra 10y ago

We're creatures of habit. In this case it's a behaviour that existed for two decades or so. Sure, it doesn't make much sense, but the same goes for various functions of the middle mouse button, depending on context: open new tab, close tab, open new application, close window, scroll, paste. Yet you don't see anyone changing those.

bobajeff 10y ago
That's because those shortcuts don't usually end up losing all user input if somehow focus got moved off of the text entry field. This is a change that should've happened a long time ago.
Aldo_MX 10y ago
> Yet you don't see anyone changing those. Except for (guess who?) Chromium... https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=255 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=255
- Klathmon 10y ago
  They aren't removing middle click, they are just making it not fire off an onclick javascript event (to match the behavior of all other browsers).

crzwdjk 10y ago

This is great news. For some use cases, backspace-as-back is a disaster waiting to happen, for example, in a complex web app used in some time-critical task and that requires occasional deleting of text but can lose state or take a while to reload if you accidentally hit back. If you hit backspace without having a text field focused, the whole thing dies and needs to be reloaded and possibly checked to make sure it's still working right, while hundreds of people are anxiously watching and waiting. I have seen laptops with the backspace key physically ripped out just to prevent people from accidentally triggering its back-button behavior.

gruez 10y ago
>I have seen laptops with the backspace key physically ripped out just to prevent people from accidentally triggering its back-button behavior. how would you correct mistakes? with the delete button?
- sbierwagen 10y ago
  ctrl+x
- crzwdjk 10y ago
  Yep, delete button or else just use the default behavior of highlighting the full contents of the field to be changed. Mind you, these were dedicated machines that were specifically used for this one purpose and not something anyone would be using for, say, writing emails.
malz 10y ago
Giant web forms have been a usability disaster since day one. Accidental back button, link click, window close, session timeout, etc, increase the chance of a failure and need to re-enter the entire form. Whereas for at least 40 years desktop software has given you a "sure you don't want to save?" option.
- azinman2 10y ago
  Prompts do little to prevent accidental behavior as most just get clicked through without absorbing what they're saying.

electriclove 10y ago

I suspect you are part of the silent majority. :)