5 ms·

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

by 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.
- kbenson 10y ago
  I've lost HN comment data 10-15 minutes into a reply by using a laptop with an overly sensitive touchpad. Multiple times. Not something I particularly enjoy, and that's just a single input field.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
    Seems like the Chromium solution is to remove your touchpad.
- crzwdjk 10y ago
  Plain old web forms are actually not so bad these days, since browsers are pretty good about keeping any entered text around if you accidentally hit the back button (or even if the browser or computer crashes). It's really the big fancy web apps with lots of stateful javascript that are a problem, since the URL doesn't necessarily describe the state of the page and the form fields the browser tried to preserve may not even exist anymore. In the specific case I'm talking about, it was a big (and rather buggy) pile of stateful javascript, and whose failure would leave a crowd of angry sports fans and player waiting for it to start working again before the game could continue. In retrospect, not using in the the first place would probably have been the better option, but ripping out the backspace keys seemed like a reasonable compromise at the time.
kagamine 10y ago
It's an edge case, but we recently asked for this 'feature' to be removed from a framework we use because the app opens programs in the browser and does not modify the URl, so backspace took the user to the last URl in history, which was the login page. In other words, while the user was in the middle of some complex task, backspace logged them out and ended the session. Glad to see it removed, alt+arrow-left/right still exist so the keyboard can still be used.

by crzwdjk 10y ago

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.
kbenson 10y ago
I've lost HN comment data 10-15 minutes into a reply by using a laptop with an overly sensitive touchpad. Multiple times. Not something I particularly enjoy, and that's just a single input field.
- YeGoblynQueenne 10y ago
  Seems like the Chromium solution is to remove your touchpad.
crzwdjk 10y ago
Plain old web forms are actually not so bad these days, since browsers are pretty good about keeping any entered text around if you accidentally hit the back button (or even if the browser or computer crashes). It's really the big fancy web apps with lots of stateful javascript that are a problem, since the URL doesn't necessarily describe the state of the page and the form fields the browser tried to preserve may not even exist anymore. In the specific case I'm talking about, it was a big (and rather buggy) pile of stateful javascript, and whose failure would leave a crowd of angry sports fans and player waiting for it to start working again before the game could continue. In retrospect, not using in the the first place would probably have been the better option, but ripping out the backspace keys seemed like a reasonable compromise at the time.

kagamine 10y ago

It's an edge case, but we recently asked for this 'feature' to be removed from a framework we use because the app opens programs in the browser and does not modify the URl, so backspace took the user to the last URl in history, which was the login page. In other words, while the user was in the middle of some complex task, backspace logged them out and ended the session. Glad to see it removed, alt+arrow-left/right still exist so the keyboard can still be used.