Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Chrome removes Backspace to go back

bugs.chromium.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

531–540 of 594 posts

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#531

Post by shardo »

27182818284 wrote: post #148
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 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…

wow, I didn't even know you could scroll using spacebar. Neat!

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#532

Post by lorenzhs »

dredmorbius wrote: post #384
CydeWeys wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People complain about it all the time on anything having to do with video playing, because when the video player has focus space is used to play/pause the video, but when the player is not focused, it scrolls down the page. Frankly, I would be perfectly happy if space to page went away entirely. I exclusively use two finger dragging on laptops and scroll wheels on desktops to browse websites. I never use space to mov…

Most of my desktop use is on a Thinkpad laptop with no mouse and the trackpad disabled. I don't have a scroll wheel or a touch screen. The gaming instance is a failure of Web controls to adequately adapt to context. I can see how that would be distracting. I am not willing to sacrifice my space-to-scroll capabilities on that account. As with Fitts' law, the spacebar is a very large target. Easy to hit. Frequent actio…

> Most of my desktop use is on a Thinkpad laptop with no mouse and the trackpad disabled.

> I don't have a scroll wheel or a touch screen.

I use the middle button + trackpoint for scrolling - works great. That's the default on most Linux distros/desktop environments, might require some configuration on Windows.

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#533

Post by jamespo »

Nexxxeh wrote: post #528
smoothdeveloper wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

alternatives: * alert if any form filled by user wasn't submitted (in case site doesn't do that already) * let 99% of user who don't know what they did (they are in minority compared to number of times backspace is pressed to actually navigate back) retype their form if they don't navigate forward (which recovers their input, or should) * add a third hand to human race so it doesn't take all the hands to navigate bac…

>lure lenovo to restore the back / forward keys on thinkpads and make that implemented on most keyboards The number of times I've accidentally hit the back-a-page button on my old X201, and wiped my in-progress form entry... They smooshed those keys right around the arrow keys. The arrow keys I use to jumping around text. That's worse than having a dual-use for backspace to me. Backspace is far enough away that it's…

Hitting them by accident is very rare for me - I love them on my x220, even more so when you can map them in emacs to switch buffer.

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#534

Post by ricksplat »

stouset wrote: post #455
meatcider wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a hotkey that essentially no other software uses for the same behavior Except for Windows Explorer, but who uses that, eh? Your level of empathy is immaterial to the conversation, but thanks for sharing.

Backspace on Windows Explorer goes up one directory, not back in your history. In a not-at-all shocking turn of events, it turns out Alt-Left and Alt-Right are in fact the hotkeys for navigating backward and forward through history, so Chrome aligns perfectly with Windows Explorer in this regard.

In Windows 95 backspace went "Up One" but it's been "Back" ever since IE 4 introduced shell integration.

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#535

Post by ydant »

OJFord wrote: post #340
shkkmo wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the backspace thing matters more than spacebar, because spacebar isn't going to cause you to lose (potentially hours of) work. I do find the spacebar behavior isn't super predictable when I am trying to pause things, such as youtube .

The most confusing thing is that Youtube and Netflix seem to occasionally toggle pause when you press space; other times Youtube scrolls, and Netflix does nothing (there'd be nowhere to scroll). I've never managed to consistently replicate it by having had the player in/out of focus already, not/scrolled, etc. odd.

It's YouTube specific, but "k" is more reliable for me as a pause/unpause button on YouTube.

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#536

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

amluto wrote: post #463
ultramancool wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

I disagree here. Some shortcuts simply suck. Backspace to go back is one. This is because backspace is very useful and means something different when a text field is focused. It would be like using just plain Q to quit.

On OS X, Command-left arrow means something different when a text field is focused, too. It means "go to the start of the line".

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#537

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

746F7475 wrote: post #512
ultramancool wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

> So make them an option and stop taking the Chrome route of stripping out everything that more advanced users use regularly. Did you really use backspace and "move back" on regular basis? Why? You most likely aren't browsing the web with just your keyboard, so unless you are a leftie it requires you to either move your hand back to keyboard or move your hand across the whole keyboard and why would you do either of t…

Where's the "thumb button" on an Apple Mighty Mouse?

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#538

Post by smoothdeveloper »

Nexxxeh wrote: post #528
smoothdeveloper wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

alternatives: * alert if any form filled by user wasn't submitted (in case site doesn't do that already) * let 99% of user who don't know what they did (they are in minority compared to number of times backspace is pressed to actually navigate back) retype their form if they don't navigate forward (which recovers their input, or should) * add a third hand to human race so it doesn't take all the hands to navigate bac…

>lure lenovo to restore the back / forward keys on thinkpads and make that implemented on most keyboards The number of times I've accidentally hit the back-a-page button on my old X201, and wiped my in-progress form entry... They smooshed those keys right around the arrow keys. The arrow keys I use to jumping around text. That's worse than having a dual-use for backspace to me. Backspace is far enough away that it's…

You can hit the other "forward" key to recover everything in a good browser and/or websites which don't do silly things (99.99% of cases).

It really feels chromium team should install telemetry:

* how many unsubmitted forms edits lost by mistake

* how many backspace keystroke to do "history-back"

They should also consider alt-gr + left as "back-history", using two hands for this could be avoided this way.

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#539

Post by vidarh »

perezdev wrote: post #374
vidarh wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are making assumptions that are invalid for a whole lot of keyboard layouts.

Must be why I said standard.

And which layout would that be?

Because it's not standard in fairly large parts of the world.

I don't know whether or not the presence of a right Alt or Alt Gr instead is most common worldwide, it seems you do. Do you have a source?

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#540

Post by grncdr »

michalstanko wrote: post #318
nkoren wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The web no longer consists of just static web pages and form data. I build complex web applications, which are stateful in many ways that don't involve forms (and involve things like websocket connections, etc). There's no way that the browser could possibly recreate that state by going forward. So web apps of any complexity must necessarily intercept the delete key and break its functionality. And to the extent that…

Finally someone brought up the fact that web does not consist of static classic HTML forms only, HOWEVER I still think Chrome could just restore those that ARE static, and as for the forms that are rendered using client-side templates in single-page apps, their creators should store them as they're being filled, just like Gmail or Google Docs store what you're typing without you having to save it manually. I incline…

I agree that automatic form restoration would be very helpful, but there's a huge space between classic HTML forms (where this is "easy") and single-page apps (where nobody really expects it to happen).

That space is where complex, dependent-on-javascript-for-no-good-reason forms live. The kind often encountered when dealing with financial & public institutions. It's unlikely that automatic form restore is going to work for a lot of these (especially multi-step wizards & the like) so preventing an extremely common accident seems extremely prudent to me.

Post reply on HN