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Chrome removes Backspace to go back

bugs.chromium.org

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Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#261

Post by r00fus »

retox wrote: post #214
27182818284 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The backspace thing has gotten attention more than ever on sites like Reddit. I have routinely seen posts complaining about it and the spacebar key doing behaviors that users never ever intended. For example, pressing space and then accidentally scrolling down which wasn't their intention at all, but is the behavior of space. I think some of those complaints reaching the front page of reddit may have helped spur this…

The tyranny of the vocal minority. It's a race to the bottom.

Do you think it actually makes sense to keep the backspace as "page-back"? It's literally lost me dozens of form entries over the years (some of which were very hard to restore).

Thankfully on OSX/Safari, this legacy behavior/cruft is not present.

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#262

Post by bhauer »

itslennysfault wrote: post #192
floatboth wrote: post #186

Good. I always set browser.backspace_action to do nothing in Firefox, because this is SO infuriating. You think you have a text field focused but you actually don't (e.g. accidental mouse click removed the focus), you press Backspace and BOOM! suddenly you're on the previous page. Ctrl/Cmd+[ and ] is the real shortcut!

⌘←→ too... Not sure why there need to be so many back button shortcuts. Glad they removed backspace.

Yes, and for what it's worth, I feel Space to page down is another oddball one. I guess it's for the supremely lazy who don't want to have to move their finger to the Page-Down key.

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#264

Post by snuxoll »

klodolph wrote: post #239

I'm going to take a somewhat contrarian view and say, "Thank you, Chrome developers." It's always easy to tell apart the people who know shortcuts from the people who don't, if you watch them use their computers. Someone with a few shortcuts on tap will zoom around their monitors, switching between mouse and keyboard only when necessary. But there are a few shortcuts and user interface quirks that are too outdated an…

> "Thank you, Chrome developers."

I'm going to agree with you. Backspace is a totally weird shortcut for navigation and I can't say I've seen it used anywhere else for "get my back to where I was" outside of a browser (it's almost always escape or some function key or other combination).

Alt/Command+Left/Right Arrow has been my go-to for navigation in the browser for years now, especially since "forward" has no other shortcut.

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#265

Post by Kadin »

stevetrewick wrote: post #219
mrweasel wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with the trailing whitespace. Worst feature EVER. I can't begin count how many times I've had the following talk with users: user: My password doesn't work me: Did you copy it from Outlook?

If you're emailing users' passwords you've got bigger problems than a bit of trailing white space.

Lots of systems email users an initial password which must be changed at first login. It's not the world's most elegant solution, but it's also not terrible and basically does an implicit email verification. I'm not sure that it's any worse than sending a URL with an embedded token that takes the user to a password-change page.

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#267

Post by r00fus »

floatboth wrote: post #186

Good. I always set browser.backspace_action to do nothing in Firefox, because this is SO infuriating. You think you have a text field focused but you actually don't (e.g. accidental mouse click removed the focus), you press Backspace and BOOM! suddenly you're on the previous page. Ctrl/Cmd+[ and ] is the real shortcut!

Thanks for saving me a hunt to find the about:config option.

Worst thing in a demo/presentation to accidentally lose all your inputs and are forced to retype while a) people are watching and b) you might also be recorded.

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#268

Post by Kadin »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #6

One of the contributors states: "Building an extension for this should be very simple." Why on earth isn't there just a generic keyboard-shortcut preference where I can control every possible browser action and its associated keyboard shortcut? In fact, why isn't this available at an OS level? Surely it would remove a lot of unnecessary duplicate code.

> "Building an extension for this should be very simple."

Which is then followed, amusingly, by a developer who has tried to do it saying that in fact, it's not that simple (without ridiculous permissions).

But now it seems to have turned into a face-saving thing where the Chrome developers won't ever reverse the change or put in a configuration option because to do so would be to admit a mistake in public.

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#269

Post by Grishnakh »

Jedd wrote: post #25

Chrome / Chromium have a habit of making these arbitrary changes that seriously annoy some (arguably small) percentage of their users, while claiming that it makes it simpler / better for everyone else, while explaining impatiently why it's infeasible to make the now missing feature a configuration option. Evidently the kinds of people that can't be bothered going into the Advanced Configuration Settings page would b…

>while explaining impatiently why it's infeasible to make the now missing feature a configuration option.

There's been a general trend in computing for a while now to not have any kind of configurability. You can see it in most of the major UIs now. And from what I've read on tech discussion forums, techies themselves absolutely hate configurability: they complain that they don't want to have to slog through a bunch of configuration options for everything, they want things to be set up to their preference out-of-the-box.

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#270

Post by cpeterso »

scurvy wrote: post #128
coldpie wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox still has Ctrl-Q to close the current window, which is right next to Ctrl-W to close the current tab on a English keyboard. This is the first extension I install: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disable-ctrl-... Dumb.

In OS X, I always map cmd-q to the system-wide accessibility feature for zoom in. Then change the zoom factor to 0x. It effectively neuters cmd-q.

I map CMD+Q to "Hide Others", which is pretty harmless and doesn't affect the current application.
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