4 ms·

Go Back with Backspace

20 points by twapi 10y ago

paulddraper 10y ago
Huh, it's made by the Chrome team. > Before Chrome 52, the backspace key navigated back...Many people lost their progress while working online by accidentally pressing backspace and leaving a page -- so we removed the feature from Chrome, and created this extension for those who prefer the old behavior. I've been hurt too deeply by backspace to ever miss it, but but that was...thoughtful of them.
bjornstar 10y ago
What a mess, the google chrome team really handled this poorly.
myfonj 10y ago
One amusing nitpick: this extension restores the backspace-outside-text-input-elements key press functionality, yet does not restore the shift+backspace counterpart (ATM). Second bitterly amusing fact is that proclaimed drawback of "accidental" backspace causing loss of data entered into form is (FMPoW) in fact quite hard to achieve: you have to make really poor web-app with `history.replace`, broken HTTP redirects or wild JavaScript rendering without proper history API "anchoring" of the view state. For normal use-case (like writing this comment) I am confident that I can go back to previous page in history and return here and I will get this textarea filled with text it contained before exit. Third fact which contradicts my previous statement and surprised me a lot is how many people here at HN expressed negative experiences with accidental history.backs (paulddraper here and namely discussion under "Ask HN: Please stop overriding standard browser navigation keys with Javascript." [1] I found while digging. Btw, Firefox goes even further: it is able to re-fill generated elements, keeps filled values after (soft) reload (aka F5 or CTRL+R) and generally prevents loss your precious data so much that I haven't experienced any accident of this kind in years (back in times this was not this reliable there was "Lazarus: Form Recovery" Firefox extension [2]). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3092100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3092100 [2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lazarus-form-recovery/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lazarus-form-...
Jordrok 10y ago
I still find myself absently hitting the backspace key to go back once I've finished reading a long page and moved my hands away from the keyboard/mouse. Then I mash the key for a bit to bring up the alt+left notification hoping that maybe it will put a blip on their analytics radar. I guess it's good that they officially released something to allow this, but it still seems totally absurd to me to need and extension to modify a single hotkey.

20 points by twapi 10y ago

Huh, it's made by the Chrome team. > Before Chrome 52, the backspace key navigated back...Many people lost their progress while working online by accidentally pressing backspace and leaving a page -- so we removed the feature from Chrome, and created this extension for those who prefer the old behavior. I've been hurt too deeply by backspace to ever miss it, but but that was...thoughtful of them.

bjornstar 10y ago

What a mess, the google chrome team really handled this poorly.

myfonj 10y ago

One amusing nitpick: this extension restores the backspace-outside-text-input-elements key press functionality, yet does not restore the shift+backspace counterpart (ATM). Second bitterly amusing fact is that proclaimed drawback of "accidental" backspace causing loss of data entered into form is (FMPoW) in fact quite hard to achieve: you have to make really poor web-app with `history.replace`, broken HTTP redirects or wild JavaScript rendering without proper history API "anchoring" of the view state. For normal use-case (like writing this comment) I am confident that I can go back to previous page in history and return here and I will get this textarea filled with text it contained before exit. Third fact which contradicts my previous statement and surprised me a lot is how many people here at HN expressed negative experiences with accidental history.backs (paulddraper here and namely discussion under "Ask HN: Please stop overriding standard browser navigation keys with Javascript." [1] I found while digging. Btw, Firefox goes even further: it is able to re-fill generated elements, keeps filled values after (soft) reload (aka F5 or CTRL+R) and generally prevents loss your precious data so much that I haven't experienced any accident of this kind in years (back in times this was not this reliable there was "Lazarus: Form Recovery" Firefox extension [2]). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3092100 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3092100 [2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lazarus-form-recovery/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/lazarus-form-...

Jordrok 10y ago

I still find myself absently hitting the backspace key to go back once I've finished reading a long page and moved my hands away from the keyboard/mouse. Then I mash the key for a bit to bring up the alt+left notification hoping that maybe it will put a blip on their analytics radar. I guess it's good that they officially released something to allow this, but it still seems totally absurd to me to need and extension to modify a single hotkey.