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Redesigning The "Back" Button

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the going-back-through-the-past dept.

TheMatt writes "Nature Science Update is reporting today about research by New Zealand scientists on redesigning how the "Back" button works in your browser. They point to the fact that the current "Back" is more of an "Up" in a stack of pages. They propose a system that records all pages visited. A good summary page of their efforts in web navigation (including a interesting thumbnail-style "Back" menu) can be found on their page."

5 of 356 comments (clear)

  1. They should... by craenor · · Score: 4, Funny

    come to the U.S. and apply for a gov't grant to study this...probably get $5 million a year at least.

    Important research!

  2. If I'm not mistaken..... by deathcow · · Score: 4, Funny


    Doesnt Amazon have a patent on this??

    (groan)

  3. Making this really useful by Gorm+the+DBA · · Score: 4, Funny
    Okay...so after reading the article, I see that they're trying to make it so that users can get back to the main page easily so they can get to the information they want.

    Why not make it *really* easy and develop a "forward" button that would actually take you to the piece of the Mega-pagecount-poorly-indexed-searchbuttonless web portal of doom that you're really interested in? They could call it the Psychic Fast Forward or some such.

    Base it off of all of the Total Information Awareness data that the government wants to gather about us, so it predicts what you want.

    And then place locks on your browser so that you really only want to go to the major sites.

    Then eugenically engineer society so that you don't even know that you ever wanted to go somewhere else.

    NOW we're making the web useful!!!!!!!!!!!

  4. Some sites already redesign the Back button by serutan · · Score: 5, Funny

    By using script to change it to a "Stay-Here" button. Those are the sites you make a point of never bookmarking, or ever intentionally visiting again.

  5. No, redesign the FORWARD button... by Lxy · · Score: 4, Funny

    The back button is fine the way it is.

    If the Back button takes me to where I've been, why doesn't the Forward button take me where I haven't been yet? I want a button that takes me to where I'm going to go before I ask it. Is that too much to ask?

    --

    There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
    :wq