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It is time to unlink the “Backspace” – Browser Back shortcut (2012)
- popey456963 10y agoI actually use backspace a lot. I don't know of another hotkey on the keyboard that I can use to go back a page. If I space backspace it seems to alert me to do Alt + Backspace, but that doesn't function either.
- kemayo 10y agoIt's not saying alt+backspace, it's saying alt+left-arrow.
- shakeel_mohamed 10y agoThat's not obvious :)
- PhasmaFelis 10y agoI'm not sure how you could get more obvious than a picture of an Alt key and a picture of a Left Arrow key.
- sp332 10y agoBackspace is often represented by a left arrow. https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=backspace https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=backspace In context, it could have been confusing.
- DonHopkins 10y agoWhat does an "alt" key even look like? Is it the one labeled "option"? http://www.cultofmac.com/3147/opinion-apple-keyboards-need-better-key-labellin/ http://www.cultofmac.com/3147/opinion-apple-keyboards-need-b... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Option_key https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Option_key
- PhasmaFelis 10y agoIt hardly matters, since the Mac shortcut for back is Command-LeftArrow.
- DonHopkins 10y agoMy wireless Mac keyboard has a big key in the upper right corner with a left arrow on it. No way to tell if it's backspace, delete, or left. There's also a key in the lower right cluster that has a left pointing triangle on it, along with three other keys with triangles facing in different directions. Then there are two big keys on the left and right sides with upward facing hollow arrows on them. As well as keys with double left and right facing triangles on either side of another key with a right facing triangle followed by two vertical lines, and also another key with an upward facing triangle with a line under it. Not to mention the key referred to as "option" that's labeled with the word "alt" and a branching symbol.
- bognition 10y agoI use CMD+[ and CMD+] to browse backwards and forwards they work great
- PhasmaFelis 10y agoIt's Alt-LeftArrow, which has been standard for at least 20 years. Alt-RightArrow goes forward.
- thiht 10y agoOn an AZERTY keyboard, alt+left forces to uses BOTH hands since there's no right alt key. It's not a usable replacement to the backspace key
- JdeBP 10y agoIt's interesting to note that quite often in these discussions the idea that no other key exists comes up. In the 1990s, keyboard manufacturers started adding "multimedia" and "Internet" keys to keyboards, including keys whose sole and explicit functions were to move backwards and forwards in a WWW browser's navigation history (or in GUI applications in general). These keys have obviously, even in this everything-in-the-WWW-browser age, still not embedded themselves thoroughly in the public consciousness. There are clearly sizeable classes of people who don't yet regard them as the norm; and people who still first think of keys other than those explicitly engraved for the purpose as the ones to use for it, or do not even know that such keys exist. To those who are about to miss the point: Yes, your current keyboard doesn't have these keys. You didn't regard them as the norm when you bought a keyboard/computer. They haven't become so established that you don't regard systems without them as deficient, as you very probably would regard systems without (say) a "Super"/"Windows"/"Apple"/"Command" key. This, even in a world where doing many if not most things in a WWW browser is seen as the norm.
- touristtam 10y agoHow many keys do you feel is sufficient? Already the number pad is an extension that is adding a few keys. And a lot of laptop keyboard are using a Fn (function) key to access additional keys.
- colemickens 10y agoI've already, three times at least, been saved by the fact that I'm on Canary builds where this is already active. Had typed into a form, the form lost focus, I hit backspace and Chrome popped a helpful, unobtrusive box telling me how to go back if I was trying to. And there's already an extension that brings it back. I hate seeing Chromium bug tracker links posted to HN or Reddit though. Just like Microsoft GitHub Issues. They just don't need more poorly informed knee-jerk trolls. edit: Maybe I should clarify? I don't think that anyone is a troll for wanting to keep existing Backspace behavior. But when these bug reports get linked to from reddit/hn, they're invariably overrun by people making assumptions, posting memes and berating developers. It always wind up as counter-productive. Also, previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11729287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11729287
- colejohnson66 10y ago> Downvoted for pointing out how this change has helped me, nice. You just stay classy as ever. This happens on every news site. Point out something that disagrees with the mindset of someone and back it up with facts? Downvote. I thought Hacker News was better than this?
- colemickens 10y ago(I shouldn't have been pining about downvotes - it's not appropriate either; I've removed it.)
- kevin_thibedeau 10y agoSometimes you get sympathy upvotes. Had a -3 converted +11 the other day for a grouchy observation guaranteed to unsettle the kumbaya groupthink around here.
- revelation 10y agoAs usual, they have chosen the worst possible "solution": removed the shortcut, didn't add an option. They did miraculously have time to flash up the two-key shortcut for back though, when they detect you pressing backspace multiple times. Instead of, you know, taking that opportunity to show a simple popup of "do you want backspace to browse back?". So now everyone has to install an extension that in the usual Chrome fashion can "read and change all your data on websites you visit." I think for the next kind of feature they remove this way I'll add an extension that initially works and then have it auto-update to redirect people from everywhere to a petition site after a random interval. Just to point out the insanity in pouring lots of effort into security, sandboxing and even SSL only to force people to install auto-updated untrusted extensions that can access everything to bring back a minor keyboard shortcut. This is the exact kind of annoyance that will see people click yes yes yes on all kinds of red flashing security warnings.
- ubernostrum 10y agoremoved the shortcut, didn't add an option That's the right way. "Never really remove anything, just wrap it in a default-off config option" is a horrendously bad way to build software. Every configurable option is an opportunity for bugs and an opportunity for misconfiguration.
- revelation 10y agoIf you are going to argue this, you might just as well start arguing that no programmer is allowed more than a quota of 10 ifs per month. Every conditional branch in your program is "an opportunity for bugs and an opportunity for misconfiguration". This is the equivalent of hoisting a white flag. Theres tons of code added to Chrome all the time, it doesn't add configuration options but it sure as hell has the very same effect.
- geofft 10y agoAn if is just an inconsistent goto, so, yes. if is often a code smell. For instance, any code like x = some_result() if is_valid(x): do_stuff_with(x) is indisputably an opportunity for bugs. Better would be some construct like "if let" in Swift or Rust, where you can't use x without the condition. For instance, this was the fundamental cause of Apple's "goto fail" vulnerability: the language / API style required that they check each result and run a conditional branch on their own. (The proximate cause was bad language syntax, but the opportunity for bad syntax shouldn't have been there in the first place.)
- tshadwell 10y agoin a similar vein, I often close browsers with ^W, expecting to delete a word. Thanks Vim.
- kminehart 10y agoWow I've been annoyingly using DE to delete a word. Thanks for this.
- andrewstuart2 10y agoFYI, this only works in insert mode, for the word you just typed (equivalent to ctrl-backspace, basically). And diw/diW (delete inner word, delete inner non-space-characters-word) may actually be faster depending on the context since you don't need to get to the beginning of the word.
- andrewstuart2 10y agoAnd bash, and bc, and anybody else who uses readline [1] or its conventions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Readline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Readline
- simon1573 10y agoTime to rewire that brain of yours to use 'daw' instead.
- serf 10y agoif it makes you feel better, I often try to close a terminal tabs with ^W from browser habits and delete words ;)
- matejn 10y agoThis actually works on OpenBSD, along with ^A, ^E and ^U, in Firefox and Chromium. I suspect it might work on a macOS too, but I haven't tried.
- rjbwork 10y agoThey rolled this out on chrome recently. Annoying as crap. At least there's a command line option to go back with backspace now. Hopefully they don't remove it. I may have to use another browser if they do...
- zzzcpan 10y ago'Backspace' is a widely used interface, system-wide even, and removing it breaks UI consistency. What they could have done is actually check whether there is a form with a user filled text on the page somewhere, warn the user and ask to press 'backspace' again to confirm. That's it, problem solved.
- panic 10y agoWhere else in the system does "backspace" navigate back in history?
- revelation 10y agoWindows Explorer does this.
- zzzcpan 10y agoOn Ubuntu everywhere.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- viraptor 10y ago> warn the user and ask to press 'backspace' again to confirm Works if you wanted to delete one letter. Doesn't work if you wanted to quickly "backspace-backspace-backspace..." over a few. UX is rarely easy.
- zzzcpan 10y agoDoesn't make a difference. You still have to have a delay for a warning message and a delay before you wait for another backspace and it won't be too short to permit these "backspace-backspace-backspace..." to ever work.
- viraptor 10y agoYes, but you mention it only now. And now we're getting into actual design with all the edge cases that it should handle. The next topic would be "what's the appropriate delay" given that both the repeat rate and the repeat delay are configurable and that users can have various input devices. And what about terminals with delayed display time. I'm not saying it won't work, I'm just against the dismissive "that's it - problem solved".
- codedokode 10y agoGood decision. But there are other ways to lose text, for example hitting Ctrl + R instead of Ctrl + T. I am not sure if web standards allow to restore text in this case.
- colejohnson66 10y agoI haven't looked, but according to the Chrome devs, because of the way the browser is built, saving the entire state of the DOM, JS, etc. is currently impossible.
- xorgar831 10y agoGlad to see this fixed, overloading backspace has caused enough lost input on websites, the binding was a short sighted mistake, there's plenty of other key combinations that make more sense.
- r721 10y agoHuge related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11729287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11729287
- lqdc13 10y agoAlt + left arrow is way more obvious than backspace. There have been countless times I pressed backspace inside a textbox and it went back to the previous page, losing all the written text.
- ww520 10y agoAlt + right would restore whatever you were writing. What is the problem?
- adiabatty 10y agoMissing 5–30 seconds of Twitch stream video, depending on whether an ad plays. Plus it's horribly distracting even if you're not missing any attached video.
- stephengillie 10y agoThis has saved my text so many times and I'm happy it exists. And I'm even more confused by the official justification for removing the backspace button functionality, as this prevents the problem they cite.
- userbinator 10y agoThere have been countless times I pressed backspace inside a textbox and it went back to the previous page I can backspace all I want inside this textbox as I'm writing this comment and it won't leave the page. I'm willing to bet that your focus wasn't actually "inside the textbox", because that's not the correct behaviour, unless the browser is making you think it's actually focused when it isn't, in which case that is an actual bug which must certainly be fixed.
- lqdc13 10y agoIt happens in some cases when the focus is on the field. Here's one condition: There are sometimes textboxes that are dynamically set to read only depending on certain criteria. If it is set to read only at some point and you aren't aware of it, backspace goes to the previous page.
- jay-anderson 10y agoI fully support this decision (though the chrome team has made some really odd decisions - https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=377191 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=377191), but why is there a general move towards software not being configurable? In the past lots of software packages let you set the key bindings to your heart's content. It feels like more and more software is removing this ability. Are there architectural reasons? Is it a costly feature to maintain?
- gefh 10y agoYes, it's costly to maintain the combinatorial interactions between configurations. But 'make it a setting' has further costs- when you're supporting a customer and you can't figure out the exact state they're in, when you can't make sweeping product changes because 8% of users have some incompatible option set, when someone implements a bad feature and there's no strong way to keep it out if you can just 'make it a setting', or when a feature becomes obsolete but is kept around 'as a setting'. It relieves the product team from one of their most important responsibilities.
- another-dave 10y agoI know your numbers are only an example, but taken at face value — if 8% of your users have an option set, maybe it's because you've overlooked a user-case that's valuable to them. In that case, having a configurable app that can feed you in this data is like free A/B testing and is a boon to a product team, IMO.
- zyxley 10y agoEvery configuration toggle is something somebody can break by clicking it wrong. For most people, things like this are a source of background worry, not a useful benefit.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Thlom 10y agoLooks like backspace is already unlinked in Safari. I hadn't noticed, but tried now and nothing happens.
- kalleboo 10y agoThe shortcut was invented by a Microsoft and came to browsers through IE. Firefox only does it by default on Windows and Safari has never supported it AFAIK
- rbut 10y agoNot true. Safari used to support it and it was removed in Safari 6. I remember when it was removed; I had been an avid user of the shortcut for many years. It hurt at first, but after a bit of getting over the muscle memory, I don't miss it at all now. To everyone complaining; let it go, our browsers are better off without it.
- ww520 10y agoIs that why the Backspace key suddenly doesn't work on Chrome anymore? Annoying as hell. Who made this stupid decision? Android has back key and home key that users hit accidentally all the times. That doesn't cause much problem. Why can't the Web apps save their state to better handle the accidental exit of the app? It's not just the backspace, Ctrl-R and Ctrl-W all exit the app. Don't break existing functionality!!
- jtchang 10y agoTry to view it overall as a product decision. I don't think it is necessarily "stupid". In fact I think a lot of thought went into it. Not just someone saying "oh today I will remove the backspace functionality". I think your arguments are sounds. Don't break existing functionality is good but you have to take it into context. Sometimes you have to in order to make the product as a whole better.
- ww520 10y agoIt's just a lazy way to fix a perceived problem, and didn't fix it completely. The correct way is to preserve the states, like the phone apps. iOS and Android have solved it for the longest time.
- galacticpony 10y agoThat doesn't work. The shitty web app is going to intercept the "go back" event as "destroy all user data, as intended" and you're fucked. If this never happened to you, good for you, you lucky bastard. Now get out of the way, this is a quality of life improvement for millions of real people out there. Hard working people. Mothers and Grandmothers. Think of them while you are bothered to work around this slight inconvenience of yours.
- tajen 10y agoProgrammers can buy an awesome mouse with a back and forward button anyway ;) and infinite wheel.
- emilong 10y agoIf you haven't run into this on a recent build of Chrome, just try hitting backspace a couple of times and you'll get a toast telling you how to go back. On Mac, that's ⌘+←.
- stephengillie 10y agoSo the key binding exists, but it doesn't perform the expected function? This sounds trivial to correct, were the code readily available.
- satori99 10y agoBackspace has been the Windows Explorer shortcut for backward navigation since Windows 95. I use it all the time both in both Explorer and Firefox. And have never ever accidentally deleted text when trying to navigate, or accidentally gone-back when I'm trying to delete text. Why is this suddenly an issue for Chrome users?
- adiabatty 10y agoIt's been Up since at least Windows 3.0. They might have changed it to Back recently. It's not suddenly an issue; I've occasionally accidentally gone back since IE 3. Between fourth mouse buttons, alt-left, and touchpad swipes, Chrome devs are starting to think that backspace-as-back is more trouble than it's worth.
- ygra 10y agoAnecdotally, I've hit my mouse's back button way more often accidentally than I've gone back accidentally by hitting backspace. And backspace does have the benefit of being able to type it with one hand.
- userbinator 10y agoWouldn't something like an "This page contains unsubmitted form input. Are you sure you want to leave?", with maybe a configuration option to disable it, be far better than breaking a long-established and extremely useful keyboard shortcut? Instead the developers chose the easy way out, to pander to users who are apparently too stupid to notice that the focus is somewhere other than the text field they're entering into. Why not also remove the ability for spacebar/Enter to navigate to the currently focused link (or have they removed that already)? If you start blindly pressing keys on a page without looking, it's your own damn fault. In any case, this screenshot of Opera's keyboard shortcut configuration shows just how far browser configurability has regressed: http://www.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/keyboard-setup.jpg http://www.ghacks.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/keyboard-se...
- gefh 10y agoWeb apps are too complicated to rely on form input changes as a stand-in for user state. Good idea about the space/enter thing, I'll file a bug.
- userbinator 10y agoGood idea about the space/enter thing, I'll file a bug. I was being sarcastic. I seriously hope you are too.
- DonHopkins 10y ago"But not that sarcastic, to be honest with you."
- mercer 10y agoI hope he was not. As a 'power user' I use GleeBox for keyboard navigation to links that match the text I enter. And as a power user, I've occasionally accidentally navigated away from a page by using space/enter while I was focused on a link without realizing it. Or backspace in the wrong context. Considering that I never intentionally used the space/enter action to navigate to a link, I wouldn't mind browsers removing this. I rarely encounter people who are so incredibly unsympathetic to the difficulty others face in using technology (even 'power users' like myself, apparently). Surely there's a point where perhaps we should at least consider changing our approach, when what works for us does not work for many (most?) other people. I haven't met a single non-power-user who actively used backspace to navigate back to the previous page, for example. At the risk of getting too personal, but with the memory of seeing my mother and grandmother actually crying because something they cared about disappeared for some reason that only I understood: please find something else to feel superior about, or just shut up and feel smug by yourself. It's difficult and frustrating enough already for many people to adapt to the rapid technological changes around them.
- carapace 10y agoThe "real WTF" here is that user interface should travel with the user. It shouldn't be under someone else's control at all in the first place. It should be platform-agnostic. Windows v. Mac v. Linux (v. Web Apps) and all their applications should all have the same UI: what the user wants. As a first approximation imagine a JSON doc that specifies a mapping from standard input events to standard commands or functions; it can be extended with application-specific, uh, specifications. It's treated as a "first-class" entity, and respected by apps and Desktops as a matter of course. Something like that would save all this trouble, no?
- zyxley 10y agoSo what do you do when Grandma accidentally deletes this JSON file and every app on her computer breaks?
- carapace 10y agoThat's a orthogonal problem with known solutions.
- DonHopkins 10y agoIn other words, just write a browser in JavaScript and HTML, on top of the existing browser. And then you just have all the same problems over again, only much, much slower. And who exactly defines "standard input events" and "standard commands" and "standard functions"? Those terms don't have any meaning. Such standards do not exist, and never will. Hardware and software developers are not suddenly going to stop defining new input events, commands and functions because some yahoo on the internet proposed a hypothetical standard and insisted that everyone rewrite all their programs to use it and nothing else.
- carapace 10y agoWell, I think you know the particular windmill at which I tilt. You said it yourself: we're not going to stop changing things. My problem is that it's arrogant and rude to force the changes on the users.
- Osiris 10y agoIn Opera 12, and now Vivaldi, I got used to a really simple shortcut for going back a page: home down the right mouse button then click the left button. Unfortunately, Mac's don't have two independent mouse buttons and I really miss that quick shortcut.
- acarabott 10y agoI never, ever have the problem of clicking on the wrong link, or going to a page I don't like. Why should I be punished by all of these incompetent people who need to go BACK so often?
- korethr 10y agoI've become accustomed to using backspace as a Browser Back keyboard shortcut, though I can sympathize with the hate for such. More than once did I intend to go back, only to discover the cursor was presently focused in a text box, or conversely, intend to erase a minor spelling mistake only to go back and lose everything. I think what I value is not so much having Backspace == Browser Back, but simply having a keyboard shortcut for Browser Back. So certainly, by all means, get rid of Backspace == Browser Back. But please leave a means of configuring at least something as a Browser Back keyboard shortcut.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- velox_io 10y agoAs a user: I really don't understand the reasoning behind this. Backspace is always easier to find, even on the quirkiest keyboards and useful for navigation. As a Dev: If the user is in danger of accidentally loosing their work then this is a usability issue, which is easily fixed with window.onbeforeunload prompt. Since the back button is now 'fixed', I wonder if developers are going to see a Javascript confirmation as a bad practice, leaving users who accidentally close press back or close a tab with no safety net. This seems like a fix, for something that was never broken. I wish the Chrome team would work on giving JavaScript prompts and dialogs a much more modern look at feel.
- viraptor 10y ago> which is easily fixed with window.onbeforeunload prompt. It would be nice, but realistically, you can't expect every single website to get everything correct. If you could force it on people to implement a correct onbeforeunload behaviour, backspace wouldn't be a problem. But you can't force it, and you can't force it to be correct. (webapps are pretty complicated these days "are there any unsaved changes" is not always a trivial question) This way a class of errors has been removed rather than forcing everyone to think of it in many places.
- another-dave 10y agoI think it's just provided less incentive for developers to handle 'unhappy paths' within their app — there are still plenty of ways that you'd want a webapp to handle unexpected closure (e.g. user accidentally closing a tab, browser crashing, network connection dropping before save takes place). If an app is handling these states fluidly they will likely get the 'accidental back' problem solved for free.
- swift 10y agoI can sympathize with the frustration of losing a convenient keyboard shortcut like this, but I'm surprised that more people haven't switched to using touchpad gestures to navigate back and forth. Your hand is there anyway for scrolling; I find it very convenient. I know this doesn't really help on a desktop machines with a mouse, though.
- zzzcpan 10y agoYou are right, there are different input methods, some of which are just as convenient. I actually use a wacom tablet with a pen, so the change doesn't bother me that much. It's just as quick for me to point and click, as it is to press a keyboard button. But the level of incompetence of chrome team in user interfaces continues to amaze me.
- Mithaldu 10y agoThis is being wrongly treated as a binary choice of: 1. Disable the behavior. 2. Let it remain, do nothing else. Meanwhile the actual problem is being ignored completely, which is: Form contents are discarded on history traversal, even at reasonable depth. The correct solution is to do what other browsers have successfully implemented already: 3. Retain form contents on history traversal. That way people who accidentally go back, can go forward again and keep all their input.
- galacticpony 10y agoThat's not the problem. What you're talking about already works. There's numerous things that can go wrong, here's two common ones: 1) The page you are going back to is a login prompt, which immediately redirects you, overwriting your "forward" state. 2) Javascript. Everything can happen. Everything will happen. Your worst nightmares will come true.
- zzzcpan 10y agoYes, saving input won't be possible. But generally, applications that accept user input and cannot save it for some reason ask for confirmation to lose it, so users won't lose it accidentally. Take a text editor for example, you can open it and close it and it won't bother you, but if you write a few words and try to close it, it will ask you whether you are ok losing the data. This is what users expect nowadays. Chrome team somehow doesn't understand/recognize that and instead of fixing the problem in a generally accepted way, tries to rearrange the interface to have fewer accidents, breaking UIs too much in the process and pissing off a lot of users. And that's bad.
- galacticpony 10y ago"But generally, applications that accept user input and cannot save it for some reason ask for confirmation to lose it, so users won't lose it accidentally." You'd think they do, but they don't, at least not all of them. The problem isn't the properly designed webapps, it's the improperly designed ones. That's what you somehow don't understand/recognize. Also, the problem with the redirect happens on a certain popular bulletin board software that works without Javascript (and therefore doesn't provide such a prompt in the first place).
- wodenokoto 10y agoI'm baffled with the number of people who can't see that placing delete a character and delete everything on the same key is crazy.
- oxplot 10y agoChrome will show an overlay box if you press backspace a second time (seeing it not work the first time as you expected) telling you to use Alt + <- to go back.
- benguild 10y agoWhen they made this change in the recent Chrome update, at first I couldn't believe it. But, when I thought about it more, it made sense and I left it as-is without installing an extension.
- mapt 10y agoOne of the things it might be time for is for keyboards to adapt. Copy. Cut. Paste. Forward. Back. Undo. Redo. Is there a better way to achieve these things than CTRL-key and backspace? Pretty sure I use some of the above more often than "Q", to say nothing of "Scroll lock" or "Insert". If not: Just slap 'back' into CTRL-backspace.
- lorenzhs 10y agoThere are keyboard layouts that do this. I'm not particularly knowledgeable about layouts optimized for English, but I use neo2. It's optimized for German (primary goal) and programming and English (secondary goals). It's fourth layer (activated with the key right of the space bar or of left shift on a 105-key keyboard) contains a lot of navigation keys and a numpad.
- lorenzhs 10y agoI don't know when it was introduced, but the sideways scrolling history navigation thing has caused me to lose form input several times now. I use a trackpoint, so it's really easy to scroll sideways instead of up/down accidentally (middle button + trackpoint). I guess that's a very niche problem, but I've lost a lot more input that way than via backspace. At least Chrome shows a helpful "Use Alt+Left to go back" message when mashing the backspace key and expecting it to go back.
- another-dave 10y agoI think the argument against feature flagging this (that this reduces app complexity) seems a bit thin. Normally you want to reduce the number of options in play so that you don't need to think about all the permutations when making future changes — if you introduce a feature in the future, you're not stuck supporting edge cases. But the whole point of this change is that they don't want the backspace behaviour overloaded (if it's bad UX); so it seems unlikely this would interfere with changes down the line? Annoying that adding the toast and creating a browser extension was probably more work than adding the feature flag would've been.
- MaulingMonkey 10y ago> Normally you want to reduce the number of options in play so that you don't need to think about all the permutations when making future changes Also to reduce testing overhead when you invariably don't think of permutations - which is now that much harder as you'll need to manually test with the feature flag enabled, since everyone else will probably be running with the defaults. You think all text manipulation code in and around the backspace functionality in Chrome is static? Seems unlikely to me. Also reduces refactoring overhead - less code, after all. To me, the question is which will happen first: 1) They remove the toast intentionally after everyone's muscle memory has adjusted. 2) They remove the toast accidentally by refactoring input logic and breaking the popup functionality without noticing.
- hackbinary 10y agoThis backspace as the back button in web browsers never worked very well for me, and only seemed to work when I was entering something on a webpage. It never bothered me that it didn't work, and I never found it useful, but when it did seem to work, it would destroy a long post. I support the removal, or disabling by default.
- hokkos 10y agoWe should have some top level key to do the back or forward actions on browser or file navigator, this is a so common action, Alt + <- needs 2 hands this is not acceptable.
- eropple 10y agoI'm a very happy backspace user (to the point where I wrote an extension to bring it back), but alt+arrow (or cmd+arrow on a Mac) are one-handed on laptops--which more and more people are using on the regular. There are reasons not to remove it, but this isn't really one.
- BoudewijnE 10y agoSo is no one using mouse button 4 & 5 for backwards and forwards navigation? I do.
- behnamoh 10y agoJust when users get used to some basic UI/UX element, some hotshot who's angry at his/her boss comes along and ruins everything... One specific thing about web that bothers me is lack of keyboard support for most apps. Unplug the mouse and you can't do much else with the web (esp. if it's flash). Backspace and Ctrl+W are the two most useful bindings I love in a computer. If you're going to unlink the "Backspace" because some "stupid" users accidentally press it, then you might as well "re-design" the whole keyboard, cause some idiot is going to press F5 by accident...
- homero 10y agoThat's not really accidental. Sometimes I'm pushing backspace and some stupid JavaScript changes the focus and boom the page is gone.
- touristtam 10y agoAre those JS not breaking the default behaviour then?
- touristtam 10y agoCtrl+T and Ctrl+Shift+T are equivalently useful. It's a shame there isn't some consistent way to TAB your way through the page.
- dredmorbius 10y agoI've been highly critical of Google, highly critical of their UI/UX design generally, and highly critical of Chrome lately. But Google and Chrome are doing the right thing here by disabling the backspace-as-navigation overloading. I'm rather amused to see the shrieks and screams from those having to un-learn a keybinding. I understand the pain. Most of you will be over it in a few weeks. This is a very strong argument for getting UI/UX right the first time, as it's precisely that unlearning which is a major PITA. There are people who seem to have difficulty understanding how anyone could possibly hit a backspace key unintentionally, or that the fixe should lie elsewhere (e.g., Website designes). To this: 1. Losing user state is a Bad Thing. Composed text, lost, is a massive fail. Setting up an application and websites for failure is a Very Bad Idea. Sure, when the Web was created, browsers were, well, browsers, not editing tools. That's no longer the case. Hasn't been for decades. 2. Even evil space-alien-cat geniuses fall prey to this. I've been using computers for a few decades, occasionally get paid to manage, use, and/or program them, and seem to have most of my wits, vision, and motor control about me. I still get hit by this routinely. 3. Not everyone's so lucky. I work with people suffering visual, motor control, and mental impairment issues. Intelligent people, who manage with their own lives. Most have been using computers themselves for decades, some longer than I've been alive. But yeah, when your body and brain start betraying you, it's a real bitch. Overloaded functions, particularly destructive ones, which act in ways you didn't expect, and worse, can't readily detect, are really bad. Step outside your world for a minute. And if you're designing interfaces, get that shit right. Because someone's going to be cursing your name in two decades. If you're lucky.
- dredmorbius 10y agoFrom G+ discussion where Chrome devs discussed this decision in May of this year. The suggestion of rigging up monitoring to look for this was considered, but the case was seen as so obvious (user-state loss vs. a week or two to adapt to a changed shortcut) that it wasn't considered worth the effort. See Ojan Vafai's comment(s) here: https://plus.google.com/+KentonVarda/posts/F1dio2L9XtS https://plus.google.com/+KentonVarda/posts/F1dio2L9XtS IMO the data above is enough when coupled with anecdotal data. Given that it didn't seem worth investing the considerable engineering effort we would need to gather more data. Although there was disagreement on that point. As Peter said, this decision was only loosely based on metrics. Ultimately it was intuition based on a combination of the data mentioned above and anecdote.
- Shorel 10y agoThat's why I use Opera's mouse gestures to go back. Or the mouse buttons 4 and 5.
- boterock 10y agoI have backspace in caps lock and found very comfortable to be able to go back with caps lock.
- hugodahl 10y agoReading through most of the comments, I'm led to ponder what the cross-section of the "about time/let it go" and "use vim/emacs/sublime/$editor and configure your own key bindings" might be. Same with the "use mouse button x/gesture/etc". Personally, as a heavy keyboard user, I prefer to not move my hand off the keyboard to use the mouse if I can accomplish the same task on solely on the keyboard. One benefit I've found is that I can "queue up" a key motion with my left hand while going back with my right on the backspace key. Ultimately, everyone is entitled to their own wrong opinion! g
- cardiffspaceman 10y agoFirst screen savers and now this.