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> > The correct solution: Cache tab history completely [...] This is not a solution for the majority of users. The problem with keyboard shortcuts is that most

> > The correct solution: Cache tab history completely [...] This is not a solution for the majority of users. The problem with keyboard shortcuts is that most users won't know what happened. All they'll know is that suddenly they're not on the same page any more, and then won't realize they've navigated backwards. Therefore they won't think to navigate forwards again, and they won't get back to their form data, even if it is cached. This happens to me all the time in Emacs. I'll press something by accident, make major unintended changes to my file, and have no idea what I did. Fortunately, Emacs has a way to look up key presses, but this is a relatively advanced feature that typically doesn't exist in other tools anyway. Whenever you have a feature with zero discoverability (e.g. essentially all keyboard shortcuts), you have to be very careful to avoid the "what did I just do?" phenomenon, even if you provide ways to get back to a previous state. I personally think this change by the Chrome devs is extremely reasonable in that regard. Edit: I realize that these changes are aggravating to users who actually use them on a regular basis. However, please also realize that they are not zero-cost, because they do impose a constant and non-trivial burden on everyone else (especially in cases like backspace which are relatively easy to hit on accident).

nitrogen 10y ago
Keyboard shortcuts are only undiscoverable because apps stopped listing the shortcuts next to the menu items.
- aeosynth 10y ago
  Menu items are only discoverable to those who take the time to look through them; the majority of users do not.
  - chc 10y ago
    Isn't that what "discoverable" means? That if you look for it, you'll find it?
- chc 10y ago
  In the case of "Go back," there are two or three keyboard shortcuts in most browsers, of which I'd guess backspace is probably the least (intentionally) used.
  - panglott 10y ago
    "Backspace" to go back was new to me, and just sounds like a terrible idea, you'd be accidentally deleting things all the time. Firefox does not have "Go back" accessible through the menu, although the "Backspace" keystroke works. Chrome also does not have a "Go back" accessible through the menu that I can find. Hovering over the Back button shows how to click to access history.
    - chc 10y ago
      Weirdly, these commands are in the menus for the Mac version (they're the second and third commands in the History menu), but the versions for Windows and Linux don't seem to have them.
      - panglott 10y ago
        I was wondering what the Mac versions did, since there's no Backspace. "Press Delete to go back"?
        chc 10y ago
        The key is labeled as delete, but it's functionally the same as backspace and it does indeed make you go back in browsers.
    - marcosdumay 10y ago
      > although the "Backspace" keystroke works Does not work for me, FF 38. This feature used to throw me out of forms all the time, there has been a couple of years that it stopped. Now the only FF keystroke that annoys me is the CTRL-q for closing the window, that conveniently is just by the side of CTRL-w for closing the tab, and does not save the window state.
- civilian 10y ago
  110% yes. I've been playing Stellaris, and they actually put hotkey references in the tooltip! I can't do everything with the keyboard, but I'm doing way more than I was. Hotkeys are great and we should encourage more tooltips & labels with them. Not just in videogames, but in anything that could benefit from hotkeys.
  - DonHopkins 10y ago
    Stellaris is magnificent! It's incredibly deep and complex, but it has a great user interface, and they've been totally thorough about putting helpful color coded pop-up tooltips everywhere there's something interesting to point at, giving you information about every icon and button, revealing keyboard shortcuts, and telling you one or more tasks that you need to do to first to enable disabled buttons. I really hate the cargo-cult tradition of disabled menu items that don't tell you anything about why they're disabled, or what you can do to enable them. That's so frustrating, it's like the computer knows something you want to know to do what you want to do, but it won't tell you, because you have to guess. Even better: Clicking on a disabled item should start a dialog to help you satisfy the prerequisites before performing disabled the action, instead of just ignoring you or telling you to go somewhere else. I was able to trade alien pets to a highly advanced xenophilic civilization who wouldn't otherwise talk to me, in exchange for civilian access to their space! I felt like Harry Mudd sneaking through Klingon space with a space shuttle full of tribbles!
    - LoSboccacc 10y ago
      Jeez if stellaris is considered deep what'd be your opinion on distant world: universe? Mind you I'm enjoying it but many parts fall extremely flat. Like corvette balance and topped war scores.
      - emp_zealoth 10y ago
        Apparently a game called M.O.R.E. is lurking around, promising all kinds of crazy depth (I'm super sad how bad SotS 2 was :( ) I totally agree that Stellaris kind of falls flat atm IMO - the foundation is rock solid, the game looks gorgeous and the music just blows you away...but then you play on Hard and literally nothing happens for 6 hours. Eventually a war happens and instantly degenerates into a massive my-blob-chasing-your-blob-benny-hill-nonsense :/ And you can't even achieve anything because of 100 warscore limit! Apparently there are serious improvements coming soon though(Allegedly a lot of content wasn't polished enough before the deadline so minimal viable product happened)
ultramancool 10y ago
> because they do impose a constant and non-trivial burden on everyone else (especially in cases like backspace which are relatively easy to hit on accident). So make them an option and stop taking the Chrome route of stripping out everything that more advanced users use regularly. Of course, this is why I run Firefox. I can do things like force OCSP enabled and get error pages when it fails - Chrome's solution was to call OCSP useless because their less technical users couldn't understand it. Even Firefox has buried the option behind about:config and the scariest thing for me now is that we'll lose the control we get with current FF options and extensions as they "modernize" the browser. Advanced users want this level of control.
- stouset 10y ago
  There's a cost to this too, in terms of development effort. Yeah, one option isn't a big deal, but multiply this by the gajillion times that developers have to make a choice between something < 1% of their users want and what > 99% of their users want. Backspace-as-back-button is not an "advanced feature". It's a hotkey that essentially no other software uses for the same behavior and one which conflicts crappily with the fundamental behavior of that key. It will take you, generously, a day to relearn the new hotkey. Instead you'd rather the developers maintain indefinitely an option and corresponding logic to support your existing use-case. If you can't tell, my level of empathy for this kind of griping is roughly zero. Adapt to the new hotkey and save the complaining for something that actually matters.
  - ultramancool 10y ago
    Sure, I understand your argument, but this is what addons are for. Users who want it can install an addon for it. Chrome on the other hand has such weak addon APIs that they are often unable to achieve what's needed. Firefox seems to be moving in the same direction unfortunately. I think it's worth it for those developers to at least maintain full addon APIs, even though there's a trade-off here it greatly increases the flexibility of the product.
    - recursive 10y ago
wastedhours 10y ago
Intrigued by "This is not a solution for the majority of users." - do we really know what percentage was intended? If we're going by anecdotal, then everyone I know fully uses backspace to go backwards, including parents and non-technically minded colleagues. Would have assumed that if you go backwards by accident, the obvious solution is to go forward again, no?
- warfangle 10y ago
  Given the state of usability labs at Goog, it's probably a substantial and statistically relevant percentage.
mstade 10y ago
> This is not a solution for the majority of users. The problem with keyboard shortcuts is that most users won't know what happened. All they'll know is that suddenly they're not on the same page any more, and then won't realize they've navigated backwards. Therefore they won't think to navigate forwards again, and they won't get back to their form data, even if it is cached. If this is true, it's a very convincing argument – I'd buy it for a dollar. In any event, my personal preference is to keep this backspace behavior, and my browser of choice (Safari) implements this caching perfectly. At this point, not only am I ok with the accidental back navigation, but also I actively rely on things working this way. For instance, here on HN I routinely hit back and forward to see what people wrote, and Safari keeps my drafts perfectly well.

nitrogen 10y ago

Keyboard shortcuts are only undiscoverable because apps stopped listing the shortcuts next to the menu items.

aeosynth 10y ago
Menu items are only discoverable to those who take the time to look through them; the majority of users do not.
- chc 10y ago
  Isn't that what "discoverable" means? That if you look for it, you'll find it?
chc 10y ago
In the case of "Go back," there are two or three keyboard shortcuts in most browsers, of which I'd guess backspace is probably the least (intentionally) used.
- panglott 10y ago
  "Backspace" to go back was new to me, and just sounds like a terrible idea, you'd be accidentally deleting things all the time. Firefox does not have "Go back" accessible through the menu, although the "Backspace" keystroke works. Chrome also does not have a "Go back" accessible through the menu that I can find. Hovering over the Back button shows how to click to access history.
  - chc 10y ago
    Weirdly, these commands are in the menus for the Mac version (they're the second and third commands in the History menu), but the versions for Windows and Linux don't seem to have them.
    - panglott 10y ago
      I was wondering what the Mac versions did, since there's no Backspace. "Press Delete to go back"?
      - chc 10y ago
        The key is labeled as delete, but it's functionally the same as backspace and it does indeed make you go back in browsers.
  - marcosdumay 10y ago
    > although the "Backspace" keystroke works Does not work for me, FF 38. This feature used to throw me out of forms all the time, there has been a couple of years that it stopped. Now the only FF keystroke that annoys me is the CTRL-q for closing the window, that conveniently is just by the side of CTRL-w for closing the tab, and does not save the window state.
civilian 10y ago
110% yes. I've been playing Stellaris, and they actually put hotkey references in the tooltip! I can't do everything with the keyboard, but I'm doing way more than I was. Hotkeys are great and we should encourage more tooltips & labels with them. Not just in videogames, but in anything that could benefit from hotkeys.
- DonHopkins 10y ago
  Stellaris is magnificent! It's incredibly deep and complex, but it has a great user interface, and they've been totally thorough about putting helpful color coded pop-up tooltips everywhere there's something interesting to point at, giving you information about every icon and button, revealing keyboard shortcuts, and telling you one or more tasks that you need to do to first to enable disabled buttons. I really hate the cargo-cult tradition of disabled menu items that don't tell you anything about why they're disabled, or what you can do to enable them. That's so frustrating, it's like the computer knows something you want to know to do what you want to do, but it won't tell you, because you have to guess. Even better: Clicking on a disabled item should start a dialog to help you satisfy the prerequisites before performing disabled the action, instead of just ignoring you or telling you to go somewhere else. I was able to trade alien pets to a highly advanced xenophilic civilization who wouldn't otherwise talk to me, in exchange for civilian access to their space! I felt like Harry Mudd sneaking through Klingon space with a space shuttle full of tribbles!
  - LoSboccacc 10y ago
    Jeez if stellaris is considered deep what'd be your opinion on distant world: universe? Mind you I'm enjoying it but many parts fall extremely flat. Like corvette balance and topped war scores.
    - emp_zealoth 10y ago
      Apparently a game called M.O.R.E. is lurking around, promising all kinds of crazy depth (I'm super sad how bad SotS 2 was :( ) I totally agree that Stellaris kind of falls flat atm IMO - the foundation is rock solid, the game looks gorgeous and the music just blows you away...but then you play on Hard and literally nothing happens for 6 hours. Eventually a war happens and instantly degenerates into a massive my-blob-chasing-your-blob-benny-hill-nonsense :/ And you can't even achieve anything because of 100 warscore limit! Apparently there are serious improvements coming soon though(Allegedly a lot of content wasn't polished enough before the deadline so minimal viable product happened)

ultramancool 10y ago

> because they do impose a constant and non-trivial burden on everyone else (especially in cases like backspace which are relatively easy to hit on accident). So make them an option and stop taking the Chrome route of stripping out everything that more advanced users use regularly. Of course, this is why I run Firefox. I can do things like force OCSP enabled and get error pages when it fails - Chrome's solution was to call OCSP useless because their less technical users couldn't understand it. Even Firefox has buried the option behind about:config and the scariest thing for me now is that we'll lose the control we get with current FF options and extensions as they "modernize" the browser. Advanced users want this level of control.

stouset 10y ago
There's a cost to this too, in terms of development effort. Yeah, one option isn't a big deal, but multiply this by the gajillion times that developers have to make a choice between something < 1% of their users want and what > 99% of their users want. Backspace-as-back-button is not an "advanced feature". It's a hotkey that essentially no other software uses for the same behavior and one which conflicts crappily with the fundamental behavior of that key. It will take you, generously, a day to relearn the new hotkey. Instead you'd rather the developers maintain indefinitely an option and corresponding logic to support your existing use-case. If you can't tell, my level of empathy for this kind of griping is roughly zero. Adapt to the new hotkey and save the complaining for something that actually matters.
- ultramancool 10y ago
  Sure, I understand your argument, but this is what addons are for. Users who want it can install an addon for it. Chrome on the other hand has such weak addon APIs that they are often unable to achieve what's needed. Firefox seems to be moving in the same direction unfortunately. I think it's worth it for those developers to at least maintain full addon APIs, even though there's a trade-off here it greatly increases the flexibility of the product.
  - recursive 10y ago

wastedhours 10y ago

Intrigued by "This is not a solution for the majority of users." - do we really know what percentage was intended? If we're going by anecdotal, then everyone I know fully uses backspace to go backwards, including parents and non-technically minded colleagues. Would have assumed that if you go backwards by accident, the obvious solution is to go forward again, no?

warfangle 10y ago
Given the state of usability labs at Goog, it's probably a substantial and statistically relevant percentage.

mstade 10y ago

> This is not a solution for the majority of users. The problem with keyboard shortcuts is that most users won't know what happened. All they'll know is that suddenly they're not on the same page any more, and then won't realize they've navigated backwards. Therefore they won't think to navigate forwards again, and they won't get back to their form data, even if it is cached. If this is true, it's a very convincing argument – I'd buy it for a dollar. In any event, my personal preference is to keep this backspace behavior, and my browser of choice (Safari) implements this caching perfectly. At this point, not only am I ok with the accidental back navigation, but also I actively rely on things working this way. For instance, here on HN I routinely hit back and forward to see what people wrote, and Safari keeps my drafts perfectly well.