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Chrome removes Backspace to go back

bugs.chromium.org

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Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#301

Post by pkamb »

coldpie wrote: post #73
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.

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 Dvorak, CMD-T and CMD-W (K and ',' in QWERTY) are a nice middle-finger curl pair on the right hand. Far away from Q. Easily paired with a right-thumb press of CMD. Strange to remember that two of my easily most-pressed keyboard shortcuts are in different (and I'd say worse!) positions for the vast majority of people.

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#302

Post by kuschku »

cptskippy wrote: post #63
kuschku wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want a supremely annoying address bar, you should check out Windows File Explorer from Vista/7 onward. Each component of the URI is a drop down menu item and only by clicking on whitespace to the far right can you get to the actual URI. Actually, I’m one of the people who like that so much, I enabled it even in KDE Dolphin. EDIT: Due to submission restrictions, I can’t answer right now – I’ll have to wait ab…

How do you use it? I understand how it works but I see no advantage to it over the tree view. I always enable the "expand to location" option so that my tree view is exactly where I am. To me that address bar abomination is just an obfuscation of otherwise useful information with large clickable regions of functionality I don't want.

> How do you use it? I understand how it works but I see no advantage to it over the tree view. I always enable the "expand to location" option so that my tree view is exactly where I am.

Well, the tree view in dolphin is small, and mostly hidden by the bookmark menu.

So I have to resort to using the breadcrumbs as a poor (wo-)mans tree view.

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#303

Post by _pferreir_ »

As a web application developer, I second the motion to officially thank the Chrome development team for this. "Backspace" triggering "back" is a usability disaster, and not only for inexperienced users. We recently had issues with a 3rd party editor widget losing focus due to a bug, which led to people accidentally triggering "back" and losing their data (it was a rich text field, so you can imagine how much of a problem that was). Sure, the problem here was the widget, but using such a commonly pressed key as the shortcut for a potentially destructive operation is a recipe for disaster. More advanced users have the option to use a custom extension, or even mouse gestures. Just develop an "Advanced Chrome" plugin and the problem will be solved.

As a side note, it's interesting to see how such a small change (which, as mentioned above is even reversible) can trigger such an outcry. I've read stuff such as "I've been using this shortcut for 20 years" or "I don't want an extension"... are those even arguments? Yes, applications should be "user-centred" but the "user" here is a collective of thousands or millions of people with their own incompatible opinions. There is a (very good) reason for this change and I've seen zero achievable solutions that would not imply it.

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#305

Post by crummel »

Jordrok wrote: post #153
egeozcan wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes, having a popup[1] on startup can be less or more annoying than submitting the thing to the Chrome store yourself depending on how often you restart your browser. [1]: http://i.imgur.com/qX8bNcl.png

That fucking popup is the thing that finally drove me to drop Chrome and go back to Firefox on my home PC. Of course, now Mozilla is starting to go all in on extension signing too, so the joke's on me.

Waterfox aims to get rid of some of these annoyances: https://www.waterfoxproject.org/.

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#306

Post by hussong »

makecheck wrote: post #235
EdSharkey wrote: post #50

This feels a bit like how Esc was nerfed over the years in Firefox and others until it essentially did nothing. It used to mean STOP. All sockets were closed, the page stopped loading, and I think way waaay back, even animated gifs stopped cycling and JavaScript timeouts and intervals were cancelled. Single-page webapps were the death of Esc, it was too confusing to users to have a page suddenly hang because they pre…

Or maybe, it is well past time for browsers to have two concepts: “page” and “application” windows. That way, web sites that are really trying to be applications can have one set of logical keystrokes, default security models, etc. and plain web pages can have another set. They could be further distinguished by some kind of difference in window frame.

I think this is an idea worth exploring and I wish I'd thought of that :-)

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#307

Post by shkkmo »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #293
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…

I appreciate when a product group is brave enough to strip away a traditional behavior to accommodate such a common and annoying case. They knew they were gonna catch holy hell for this one from the small but vocal group of people who use keyboards for absolutely everything and opted for a more user friendly behavior. And I fully believe that people don't know what they want until they're shown it, so I rely on data…

It took then a bit over three years to decide, but I'm glad they finally did: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=200049...

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#308

Post by crzwdjk »

gruez wrote: post #107
crzwdjk wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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?

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.

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#309

Post by hussong »

stephenr wrote: post #33
rayiner wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lose form data by accidentally using backspace like once a month. Glad to see it go. It's the worst kind of UI modality because it does different things depending on whether you've reached the beginning of the form. I like to mash backspace to clear out a form. Imagine if pressing "CTRL-S" saved if there were edits, but deleted your file if you'd already saved. People who mash "CTRL-S" habitually would be screwed.…

> I lose form data by accidentally using backspace like once a month Use a browser that will warn you about losing un-submitted form contents before navigating away? > It's especially pointless now that everyone has a touchpad or touchscreen and can swipe back and forth. I think we have very different definitions of "everyone".

Why swipe around when you could just press a button?

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#310

Post by shkkmo »

jon-wood wrote: post #246
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…

The problem with configuration options is that they need maintaining indefinitely to accommodate a small proportion of the user population. That means testing behaviour with the flag on/off, and taking into account the possibility of that flag being on when dealing with bug reports. In this case it's a minor thing which probably wouldn't require much maintainance, but you have to draw the line somewhere.

In most cases that makes complete sense... but this behavior has been around so long. Adding a configuration option means they can track data on if this feature is being used and worth continuing to support.

That said, I'm glad they finally did something to fix this bad UX design.

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