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Chrome removes Backspace to go back

bugs.chromium.org

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Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#71

Post by lstamour »

tjalex wrote: post #53
kibwen wrote: post #20

This is going to sound hyperbolic, I'm sure, but backspace-as-back is enormously important to my browsing experience. When I recently installed Ubuntu I had a small moment of panic when I realized that hitting backspace in Firefox performed some Ubuntu-specific thing rather than navigating backwards (as it does in Windows), but fortunately there's an about:config pref to re-enable the behavior. Just my two cents.

Agreed -- I am surprised (/disappointed?) they didn't add a replacement shortcut e.g. Alt+Backspace or something similar.

I thought Alt+Left arrow and Alt+right arrow (or some variant) were universal?

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#72

Post by cptskippy »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #51
cptskippy wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm primarily on Windows and that first feature annoys the heck out of me. I would rather scrolling stop or continue, but the snap-back when the mouse leaves a zone is irritating. I think the second is more of an optimization because when you click on the address bar you're most likely either copying or overwriting the URL. It's much less common to modify it. If you want a supremely annoying address bar, you should c…

The second is really annoying on Linux because selecting something in X clears the previous selection.

Yeah I can see how that would be annoying. I'm so rarely in X that I don't always appreciate some of the features it offers. Scrolling the window under the cursor though is one I always hope will find it's way into Windows.

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#73

Post by coldpie »

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.

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#74

Post by mrweasel »

douche wrote: post #67
mrweasel wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2. is a lot like Outlook (at least on Mac), oh you highlighted something, I'll just go a head and assume that that's the only part of the original email you'll want quotes in the reply... WHY? If I wanted the entire URL highlighted I could just double click on it like in every single other piece of software.

It's infuriating trying to highlight anything in Outlook. Oh, you're dragging to select part of a word, or a huge long URI? Let me go ahead and automatically expand your selection to cover the entire token, with the trailing whitespace. Haha, you're trying to circumvent my helpfulness by setting the cursor and shift-right-arrowing? Haha, no soup for you! Break down and copy it into notepad instead!

> 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?

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#75

Post by stephenr »

coldpie wrote: post #65
stephenr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Chrome not prompt you about losing un-submitted changes to a form when triggering a navigation event?

I've never seen a browser do this. It's not clear to me it's a good idea, considering how widely input fields are used behind the scenes. Websites can request that the browser ask before navigating away, but I don't think a browser could reasonably do this automatically without getting it wrong annoyingly often.

Safari does it, and I don't remember the last time I got a false positive.

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#76

Post by stephenr »

lstamour wrote: post #66
stephenr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Chrome not prompt you about losing un-submitted changes to a form when triggering a navigation event?

Most times, but not always. But it's better now at remembering what you typed if you accidentally navigate back then hit forward. I imagine in some situations I could accidentally lose form or input focus, hit backspace, and then lose everything. This could be an app that manually captures key presses with JavaScript rather than a regular input.

Sounds like an app like that should implement some kind of 'are you sure' using onbeforeunload. There are plenty of ways to navigate away from the current page (or close the tab/window) besides hitting backspace.

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#77

Post by lstamour »

dandare wrote: post #38

"We have UseCounters showing that 0.04% of page views navigate back via the backspace button and 0.005% of page views are after a form interaction. The latter are often cases where the user loses data. Years of user complaints have been enough that we think it's the right choice to change this given the degree of pain users feel by losing their data and because every platform has another keyboard combination that nav…

IE compatibility across platforms is why most if not all browsers behave this way. And even then, it probably started with Netscape or actually it probably pre-dates the graphical web, I think Lynx uses it to go back. I remember being frustrated by this "feature" as late as 1997 on dialup.

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#78

Post by iSnow »

lstamour wrote: post #44
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…

It wouldn't surprise me if the defaults on OS X are the same. #2 in particular, I consider that to be sensible autofocus behavior. If you don't want to replace the URL but instead modify it, just hit an arrow key. Partly this is because there are shortcuts to select the address bar to begin with, so I rarely use a mouse. It's generally consistent on mobile platforms too, to select the entire URL. You have to hold you…

>It wouldn't surprise me if the defaults on OS X are the same. #2 in particular

It used to be different, but that behavior unfortunately has made it to default in OS X now. It annoys me to no small extend, since I very frequently want to edit URL's to remove session ID's or reference tokens. Of course, the average user is to daft to double-click...

Re: Chrome removes Backspace to go back

#80

Post by egeozcan »

el_duderino wrote: post #52
ChrisArgyle wrote: post #5

Analysis from Chrome devs here https://codereview.chromium.org/1854963002 Though I am a frequent user of backspace in Chrome I'm inclined to agree with their decision. Almost no one is using it and casual users are confused by it. I'll just wait for someone to implement the feature in an extension.

If it is implemented in an extension, would it require the "Allow access to all of the web sites I visit" permission? I'm always a bit apprehensive to enable those sort of extensions.

Wait someone to implement it then extract source or implement it yourself, but rather than going through the store, add the code you inspected/wrote to the browser by enabling "Developer mode" in the Extensions (chrome://extensions/) then clicking "Load unpacked extension".

This would be a very simple piece of code so getting no updates is actually better for security in this case IMHO.

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