Building a Better Back Button

Justin Macfarlane writes "From Stuff: 'Net surfers use the back button more than any other key. A computer scientist has made the command more useful, writes Will Harvie.'"

Comments

it be nice

[Luke Skyewalker]

if certain people didn't abuse the back button, either...

Re:it be nice

[Anonymous Coward]

i just tried the page they linked to, and my back button worked just fine. does this great 'feature' not work with phoenix? can somebody explain exactly when the backbutton doesn't work, cause it never happend to me(even when im using IE)

Re:it be nice

[andrew_0812]

I am assuming that he means that some sites have a redirect and then if you hit the back button, it goes back to the redirect page, and then back to the page you are on. We have that problem with our content filtering provider at work. If they deem some site inappropriate, they pop up a blocker page. If you hit back, it tries to load the offensive page again, and you end up back at the blocker page. You just have to use the drop down menu on the back button.

I have never had a page that could disable the back button, so I assume this is what he means. Of course, we all know what happens when we assume...

Re:it be nice

[Anonymous Coward]

read the page linked to! It explains why back buttons sometimes don't work - it doesn't mess with your back button!!!!!

Re:it be nice

[GreyPoopon]

I have never had a page that could disable the back button, so I assume this is what he means.

The funny thing is, this report doesn't address at all what I see as the biggest problem with the "back" button. Since I develop online web scenarios that interact with backend systems in a stateful manner, I'm constantly having to deal with the fact that the back button sends little or no information to the online system when used. This is, of course, because browsers are stateless. It would be nice if the back button could be programmed to work like an html form submit that sent the contents of the current form along with some control code. This would make synchronizing with the online system much much easier, rather than having to "guess" which state the program should be in from the next form submit following use of the back button.

One option we've used is to deploy browsers with the back button disabled, but this really annoys users who would like to just browse the internet. We discontinued this practice almost before we started it.

Re:it be nice

[Anonymous Coward]

security issues anyone?

Re:it be nice

[PurplePhase]

I know that pain.

In my experience Netscape Navigator always resubmits the page when the user hits the back button. Sometimes that's a good thing(tm), other times it's just plain horrible, like when they're returning to a LONG list of retreived and/or calculated values.

All versions of IE I've programmed against refuse to hit the server on a back button push. For those long lists, that's a good thing. Whenever they've given input they wanted to keep or going "Back" means going to an earlier/out-of-date version of the data, the user and app are foobar'd.

I still haven't read the article, but when it said it's improved the back button I thought there would be some new communication protocol to include certain behaviour settings from the HTML to the browser, such as explicitly defining the above: If someone back-buttons to this page, should the browser go hit the server again (and if so, with the same or different parameters), or should it just redisplay the locally cached page?

Even that is a terribly tiny improvement, as there would still need some kinds of predictive technologies. Perhaps it could also allow the page displayed to indicate another server function (servlet, ASP, etc.) to hit to determine if the website wants the page reloaded.

Yes, some other better defined set of interactions for page-browser-servlets could be a boon to web developers. Of course then it could also be twisted to nefarious purposes as well : (

8-PP

Re:it be nice

[jcast]

The funny thing about it is, the back button on the website he mentions works for me (in Galeon). Has the website changed, or is this a Galeon/Mozilla/wherever feature?

Re:it be nice

[GreyPoopon]

Of course then it could also be twisted to nefarious purposes as well : (

I think it would be safest to just provide some very simple functionality. I'd be perfectly happy if I could use Javascript to override the event handler for the BACK button. That way, I could make the back button call any Javascript function I want. I don't imagine that this would be any less safe than defining a button with a Javascript action. To make things as safe as possible, the override would have to be deactivated with each page refresh. I honestly can't figure out why nobody has implemented this already. Heck, you could even allow similar functionality for the FORWARD button. For the ultra-paranoid, the browser could change the look of the button when it's been reprogrammed in this manner.

Re:it be nice

[AuMatar]

Great, thats just what I want- sites to be able to popup spam, or override my page to visit goatse or equally evil things whenever I hit the back button. Thats a great fucking idea.

Here's a real idea- make your website so that if you resubmit a state, it overwrites the old data and regresses the state. Or better yet- don't use HTTP for this kind of work, because it wasn't designed to do it- HTTP doesn't handle state correctly because its stateless. Write a custom app that uses a stateful protocol.

Re:it be nice

[Anonymous Coward]

It IS a good idea, although as you've pointed out, there are caveats.

Any kind of real web application holds NO state whatsoever in the browser and uses a constantly changing token to guarantee the user is always seeing what's stored on the server. If you repost a page with an old token, it's simply ignored and you're given back what the server thinks you SHOULD be looking at based on your current state. This is necessary to prevent problems caused by reload, double-clicking a submit button, etc.

Now, users do like to use the back button to return to pages, which kind of breaks this model. What's needed is a way of checking when a user has clicked back so that the server can also roll back its state.

But then, as pointed out, we'd get heaps of sites abusing this and redirecting us to goatse. It's a tricky problem.

Re:it be nice

[GreyPoopon]

Great, thats just what I want- sites to be able to popup spam, or override my page to visit goatse or equally evil things whenever I hit the back button.

Of course you'd want to be able to turn this off, just like you can popup windows in Mozilla.

Here's a real idea- make your website so that if you resubmit a state, it overwrites the old data and regresses the state

When I can, this is exactly what I do. Unfortunately, there are many times when this kind of action is not possible.

Or better yet- don't use HTTP for this kind of work, because it wasn't designed to do it- HTTP doesn't handle state correctly because its stateless.

Well, duh, if I had a choice, I wouldn't use the browser at all. Unfortunately, that's not my choice.

Write a custom app that uses a stateful protocol.

I already have a custom app that uses a stateful protocol. The web front end is almost always an addon after the fact.

Perhaps you can step into the real world a bit and realize than many web applications are addons to legacy technology. If a legacy application already handles things statefully, you have to provide some clever mechanism to make a browser function within that environment. Sure, it would be better to use a stateful technology, but customers want to be able to do "everything" through their browser these days with the smallest client install possible.

Re:it be nice

[AuMatar]

Of course you'd want to be able to turn this off, just like you can popup windows in Mozilla.

Great- but that won't help all the people who use IE that I'm forced to deal with (like my parents, or far too many buisnesses), and the code remains in Mozilla, so there's always the chance of it being used for an exploit. In fact, the whole idea seems perfect for a cross site scripting exploit of some sort. How many people will be burned by exploits or just get annoyed the hell out of before they figure out how to do it?

Well, duh, if I had a choice, I wouldn't use the browser at all. Unfortunately, that's not my choice.

Then convince your boss. Its your responsibility, as an engineer, to not use inappropriate tools. Do your damn job.

Perhaps you can step into the real world a bit and realize than many web applications are addons to legacy technology. If a legacy application already handles things statefully, you have to provide some clever mechanism to make a browser function within that environment. Sure, it would be better to use a stateful technology, but customers want to be able to do "everything" through their browser these days with the smallest client install possible.

As I said before- do your damn job, and use the correct tool. Don't shoehorn in technologies that don't fit.

Re:it be nice

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what happens when you use html to make applications, which it was never meant to do. From a User and GUI point of view, web apps make the suckiest of applications. Web Services will make the difference here finally, where you can write a nice client and have it call a web service. We are already doing this kind of stuff and its great. HTML apps will die of eventualy, and no more worrying about broken backs.

2002 Dupe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dupe from Last Year.

Re:2002 Dupe?

[telstar]

Maybe that's how the new back button works. It takes you back to stuff you've seen a year ago.

Link is to a PDF, here is the Google cache

[m00nun1t]

Google cache here.

Re:Link is to a PDF, here is the Google cache

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks !

Link was to a worthless pdf that didn't even render; how smart can that computer scientist be, if s/he can't even make a working web page ?

Re:Link is to a PDF, here is the Google cache

[lostchicken]

Thanks. Now can anyone show me the Google cache of when Slashdot ran this story the first time?

Re:Link is to a PDF, here is the Google cache

[Anonymous Coward]

No, thankyou. pdftotext does the job perfectly well for us text-only freaks, and anyone using a graphical browser will definitely have a pdf reader to hand too.

Re:Link is to a PDF, here is the Google cache

[wawadave]

Hello it worked for me.

Back button.

[13Echo]

I stopped using my back button when I used to use Opera. Tabbed browsing eliminated my need for a back button (in most cases), and kept my browsing organized. Now, Mozilla and Phoenix support this. It's a great feature. Try using it and you will see that your back button gets only a small fraction of the use that it once had.

Re:Back button.

[Apreche]

I use phoenix, and I use tabbed browsing. But it has definitely not eliminated the need for a back button. I still use it quite often. Given, not as often as I used to, but saying tabs eliminate the need for the back button is silly. I open a link in a new tab, when it makes sense to. I mean, sure you can emulate this new back button by opening everything in a new tab, and never closing them, but that's rather silly. I also use my bookmarks very effectively. According to these guys I am in the minority. I have 7 folders of bookmarks, each with 4 to 10 pages in them. Every day I go down one by one and open the folders in tabs, one at a time, until I've visited all my sites. Saves lots of time.
But, if I'm browsing around I might keep google in one tab, and then when I click a search result, open it in a new tab. But I'm not going to put every page of a 10 page article in a new tab. And if I'm in a forum, I'm not going to open everything in a new tab either. I'll end up having un-updated threads, post windows, and a big mess.
So, I use the back button less, but not that much less. And I use tabbed browsing and bookmarks about as efficiently as you can. Can I get this new better back button as a phoenix plugin?

Re:Back button.

[wheany]

My back-button usage probably stayed about the same when I switched to Opera, but I like using it a lot more now. Why? Because it is so fast. You click back, and you're there, not "You click back, wait a few seconds and you're there"

Re:Back button.

[Fulkkari]

I agree. It truly is a great feature, and it will be very interesting to see if Apple will implent it in Safari. Tabbed browsing is actually one of the reasons why I prefer Chimera over Safari. On other hand Safari has the snap back button...

Re:Back button.

[inerte]

Don't forget that you can go back a page with your mouse. Deafult configuratios is hold right button and click left button.

Forward is reverse, hold left and click right.

And since Opera (by deefault) doesn't reload backed or forwarded pages, this operation is very fast.

Not to mention gestures: Hold right button and move mouse to the left, you are back. Hold right button and move mouse to the right, and you go forward.

Frankly, Opera kick ass ;-)

Re:Back button.

[stefanor]

I never used my back button.
Even before I converted to Opera, I used to browse in the tabbed style with Netscape's open in new window.

I was totally flummoxed when I saw how everyone was raving about tabbed browsing, the new feature - that was how I have always browsed, and probably will continue to use for many years.

I cannot concieve people waiting for their one window to open, and then going back if it was not what they wanted...

Re:Back button.

[mirko]

BTW, Apple released a new Safari beta yesterday.
It has an improved SSL subsystem which makes 95% of the previously unreachable SSL servers reachable.
See my journal for more...

Re:Back button.

[BigBir3d]

I have to agree. When I finally switched to tabs (month or 2 after mozilla made them available) I started to wonder how I ever made do before without them.

The forward and back buttons are now fairly useless.

Is this pdf trying to implement something similar to the new thing on Safari? Flash back or whatever they call it?

Re:Back button.

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice that the comment said "in most cases".

Quit nitpicking.

Re:Back button.

[nil_null]

I really like what Opera did with the Forward button. Do a Google search, and you can use the Forward button (or the equivalent keyboard keys) to go forwards through the search result. I just tried it on a review site and it worked on one of the reviews! It appears that Opera will allow you to use forwards on any page with a "Next" link.

I've been waiting for this feature for a long time, to the point that I've thought of writing it myself. As a simple solution, I thought about making a macro that used Mozilla's type-ahead find to click on Next. I got tired of scrolling down to the end of the page and finding and clicking the Next button over and over again.

Well, now Opera has this much needed feature, and hopefully the other browsers will copy it from them.

Back button improvement? Nah, forward button is what needs the improvement...

Re:Back button.

[pixelbeat]

As with most things, the keyboard is much faster
for navigating than using the mouse (as you have
to move your eyes/hands and look for the back button).
Alt+Left is the combination on mozzilla & galeon.
You can find many more handy keyboard shortcuts here

Re:Back button.

[Anonymous Coward]

i also usually opend lots of windows before i had tabed browsing, but i still prefer having it. now i usualy use it to keep the different windows more orderly. for example if im browsing /., i might have one window with the article, and one with the comments. then in each window, ill open up tabs for clicking on links(like when im writing a comment, looking at a posts score, checking out places the article linked to and so on)
i could also do this without tabed browsing, but i feel that its more convenient that way

Re:Back button.

[jez9999]

It's a great feature. Try using it and you will see that your back button gets only a small fraction of the use that it once had.

I don't buy this. Tabs are no big deal, I just open new browser windows instead. When using Mozilla, I always open a web page in a new window rather than a new tab. Far more used to organising browser windows like that than having a load of tabs.

Re:Back button.

[eglamkowski]

Gesture based back/forward would seriously annoy the piss out of me. I'm no doubt a freak in this regard, but I like to randomly press my mouse keys and move the mouse around :-p
Guess my mouse hand gets bored while I'm reading the page and just does stuff to stay busy.

But then, I assume it would be a configurable option, so probably nothing to worry about.

As for tab replacing back, I had been using "Open in New Window" for years before I switched to Mozilla, so the tabs just replaced new windows for me. I only rarely use the back button in any event.

I started doing that because browsers, astonishingly [to me], did not use cached pages when using the back button. Which boggles my mind as it is completely obvious to me that that is what they should do. Especially if the page took a long time to load (e.g. heavy congestion, or high bandwidth site) or if you're on a slow connection (which many people were years ago, and quite few still are today).

If you know you are going back to a given page, better to open a new window (or tab) and leave the old page open so you don't have to wait for the reload.

But then, I have some ideas for automobile design that seem completely obvious to me that could have been done 50 years ago that apparently nobody else has thought of yet :-p

Re:Back button.

[Anonymous Coward]

Open bookmarks one by one? Tedious.

At least Galeon has "Open folder in tabs" feature, which conveniently opens every bookmark in a bookmark folder in tabs. Very nice. I wish Mozilla would implement it too (as there's no Win-Galeon).

Re:Back button.

[Surak]

I stopped using my back button when I used to use Opera. Tabbed browsing eliminated my need for a back button (in most cases), and kept my browsing organized. Now, Mozilla and Phoenix support this.

I wouldn't say 'eliminated' but it certainly cuts it down, especially when googling for info, I don't have to find my google search in the back button anymore. (I don't use any sidebar searching because sidebar searches don't give you all the info.)

And, BTW, Konqueror 3.1 also supports tabbed browsing now too. Phoenix rocks, and its way faster than mozilla, but it still doesn't beat Konq for speed and stability. NOt to mention Konq supports subpixel antialiasing (great for LCD panels ;) out of the box, while Phoenix requires some tweaking. (To be fair, Phoenix isn't releasable yet either).

Re:Back button.

[Anonymous Coward]

phoenix has it, so i imagine mozila has it as well

Re:Back button.

[Jugalator]

I still think it's faster if you happen to own a 5-button mouse. Click, you're back. Click, you go forward. :-)

Hmm... Didn't know about that Right Button + Left Button to get back. Interesting.

If only Opera could offer the same middle-click on a link => open tab in background as in Phoenix. That's a shortcut I'd kill for. :-)

Re:Back button.

[jkabbe]

tabs work great in the example of: a -> b -> c -> b -> d -> b -> e Assuming that you know that page "b" is a page that you might try several links from. You keep your right hand on the mouse and your left hand near command-w. It is very efficient. Command-left_arrow doesn't work so well because the arrow keys are on the same side of the keyboard as the mouse usually is

Re:Back button.

[EvilBudMan]

What we really need is a "South" button. Maybe a "West" button would be nice too, but we could eliminate "North" and "East" since there is really no need to really go there.

M$ Explorer XP5000

Re:Back button.

[jkabbe]

I am glad it's not just me. I like to randomly click and will usually highlight random sections of text repeatedly while surfing. Anything that handles gestures or pops up menus over highlighted text just really doesn't work with my browsing habits.

Re:Back button.

[Sparr0]

if your mouse driver allows you to define the behavior of the middle button, which many do, then you can map it to ctrl+shift+leftclick which is the shortcut for open new window in background in Opera. hope this helps

Re:Back button.

[mj01nir]

At least Galeon has "Open folder in tabs" feature, which conveniently opens every bookmark in a bookmark folder in tabs. Very nice. I wish Mozilla would implement it too

Moz has had something similar for awhile. It's referred to as a "group of tabs" and can be set via the regular bookmarks interface. Even better, in Moz you can set one of these groups as your home page. When I open Moz, it automatically launches 9 "home pages" plus a couple of blanks.

Re:Back button.

[a hollow voice]

Ditto for Opera 7. Right-click on a bookmark folder and click "open," or drag the folder onto the tab strip. I think Opera 6 called it something different, but same idea.

Re:Back button.

[radish]

Why is "open in new tab" any better than "open in new window" which I use all the time? Surely it's just switching from SDI to MDI, at the same time as people are frequently slating MDI and moving apps from MDI to SDI (like Office XP for example).

Re:Back button.

[lamp77]

in phoenix at least, right clicking on a bookmark folder has an 'open in tabs' option, which opens every page in the folder on its own tab.

Re:Back button.

[FreeQ]

I , for myself use Opera too but it's not tab browsing that have eliminate the use of the tab "button" but the gesture. ok i give you that it is the same function that i call but it eliminate much of the pain commin from using this function.

i wish i could creat more of these gesture by myself like creating one to get back 2 pages to dodge those stupid traps but i'm pretty sure the guys at Opera will come up with something in these line sooner than later .

Re:Back button.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nerd alert! Nerd alert!

Re:Back button.

[Mydron]

Alternatively you could use mouse gesturing that Opera supports. Right click on the link, pull straight down on the mouse, unclick and voila!

It might take a few tries but it becomes very intuitive. Even though I can go back and forward at with one mouse click I still occasionally find myself using the gestures instead. I think it may have something to do with the physical affordance that the gesture implies.

Re:Back button.

[rmohr02]

I have at least 125-150 bookmarks for Mozilla (not including the ones that came with Mozilla), but they're not organized. All of my bookmarks have keywords associated with them, so I can search the web for *** at anytime with "ggl ***" in the URL bar, or "lucky ***". Then there's "/.", "sf" (sourceforge), "bugz ***" (bugzilla bug #***), "mz" (multizilla.mozdev.org) and the list goes on and on.

Re:Back button.

[sapped]

By opening it in a new tab it's easy to keep an eye on the "loading" indicator. (In Netscape it shows a spinning icon.)

That way I can easily continue browsing my current document and only flip over to the new document once it is completely loaded.

That might not seem like a big deal to a lot of people, but it makes all the difference for me.

Re:Back button.

[mj01nir]

Doesn't look like Mozilla does *that* yet!
It'll be in soon, I'm sure.

Re:Back button.

[Nightpaw]

Ha. I thought I was the only one. Random highlighting makes computer text so much easier to read. It gets annoying in Opera 7 because now you can drag any image off a page, and sometimes I accidently grab invisible spacer graphics.

Re:Back button.

[Jugalator]

Yes, that's a good idea and I might be able to do that, although I'll loose the scroll function, although I might still roll the weel to scroll. :-)

I'll check it out. Hopefully I can make a special rule for Opera then, otherwise I suppose the middle-button functionality in all other apps will break.

Re:Back button.

[ckaminski]

You and me both, brother. Maybe we should all start a support group?!

-Chris

Re:Back button.

[stridebird]

I do...I buy in. In the course of my working day, I might open - and leave open - 10 or more browser windows. As a windows (NT) user, if I opened each of these in a separate window, my task bar at the bottom becomes unusable, as they have to shrink to accomodate all the open tasks. So having my entire days worth of saved browser windows all neatly bundled up as tabs within Moz or Opera is very tidy.

At a slight tangent, it's always bothered me that I can't reorganise the task bar tabs, it would be great to be able to move them around to change the order they are in. I know that XP has improved the situation somewhat, but still not enough to satisfy my power-user hunger.

Re:Back button.

[Nakarti]

You mean you don't have a couple hundred bookmarks like everyone else?
If I went through ALL my bookmarks, without going to work or school, or sleeping, I'd be able to do it in, oh, a week.

Re:Back button.

[Anonymous Coward]

before using tabs in mozilla i was using tabbed windows in pwm. all my netscape windows opened up in a new tab in that windowspace. now i sometimes open up a new moz window to organize my tabs, and that moz window is in a tab in the same window space. it's also convenient to open terms in the same window space, only tabbed away, and then run screen in each of those. whee! everything is a key-command away, but neatly organized in tabs and screens.

i still use the back button too.

Re:Back button.

[CaptainStormfield]

Quoth the poster: I really like what Opera did with the Forward button. Do a Google search, and you can use the Forward button (or the equivalent keyboard keys) to go forwards through the search result.

The Google Toolbar offers a similar feature. You can turn on "forward in result" and "back in result" bottons with the behavior you describe. Unfortunately I don't think the toolbar works with Moz.

Re:Back button.

[13Echo]

I'm not sure about the newest versions of Konq, but previous version of 3.x were very unstable. Konq benefits though from having a single widget set in KDE/QT that lets you enable antialiasing in the control center.

In regards to Phoenix, it works just fine with subpixel rendering. You need to have a version of it compiled with XFT support. That's it. It really doesn't require tweaking. It's just that the binaries are usually compiled for the lowest common denominator. Distributions are including versions of Mozilla and Phoenix with XFT support.

If you do have a version of Phoenix with XFT support, it relies on your Freetype Libraries and Gnome 2 settings to determine the type of antialiasing that is used. If you have Freetype compiled with the bytecode interpretor, then it will use that. If not, it uses the autohinter. Gnome 2.2.0 now has a control center for fonts that let you tweak the smoothing, hinting, and subpixel order. It lets you enable subpixel rendering, which in-turn also effects other apps, like Mozilla. There is so much flexibility that almost everyone can get the results that they desire for antialiasing.

Re:Back button.

[Eimi Metamorphoumai]

For a while I've been using the following bookmarklet, which does a pretty good job. Suggestions are definitely welcome. Basically, it first tries to follow the "Next" LINK if there is one. If that fails, it searches for a link with the text "Next", and if that fails it tries to increment the last number in the url (so if you're on image001.jpg it'll go to image002.jpg). I appologize that it's not well formatted and pretty hard to follow; it was cobbled together from a few different bookmarklets.

javascript:( function(){
var z,i,e,s;
z = document.getElementsByTagName('LINK');
for (i = 0; i < z.length; ++i) {
if (z[i].rel.toLowerCase().indexOf('next') != -1){
document.location=z[i].href;
return;
}
};
z = document.links;
for (i = 0; i < z.length; ++i) {
if ((z[i].innerHTML && z[i].innerHTML.toLowerCase().indexOf('next') != -1)){
document.location=z[i].href;
return;
}
}
IB=1;
function isDigit(c) {
return ("0" <= c && c <= "9")
}
L = location.href;
LL = L.length;
for (e=LL-1; e>=0; --e)
if (isDigit(L.charAt(e))) {
for(s=e-1; s>=0; --s)
if (!isDigit(L.charAt(s)))
break;
break;
}
++s;
if (e<0) return;
oldNum = L.substring(s,e+1);
newNum = "" + (parseInt(oldNum,10) + IB);
while (newNum.length < oldNum.length)
newNum = "0" + newNum; location.href = L.substring(0,s) + newNum + L.slice(e+1);
})();

Re:Back button.

[jmertic]

I love using tabs, and I can't go back to IE because of that. However, when you think of the concept of "tabs", it really is the same as opening as a new window. The same basic functionally exists in the Windows toolbar ( or KDE/Gnome/other WM toolbar ). And before tabs, that's how I would work, and it worked fine.

The big difference is that tabs have some advanced functionality that isn't present in using and MDI style browsing, namely:

• Bookmarking a Group of Tabs
• Reloading a Group of Tabs at once
• Opening new pages/bookmarks or doing location bar search with the results appearing in a new tab.
• Reordering tabs ( useful to have all slashdot pages together, then all other pages after it; good for organization )
• Easily open links from main page in background (middle click in Mozilla)
• Browsing is ( more easily ) contained in one window, so switching between tabs is easier and quiting out is easier. Being in one process is an issue ( one error brings down entire browser with all tabs )

Granted, I'm not saying that they following things are possible via some sort of tweaks or hacks to a MDI style browser, but they seem to work better with tabs.

Re:Back button.

[Ma�djeurtam]

Count me in!

Is there any psychologist out there willing to explain what we are suffering from?

Re:Back button.

[Anonymous Coward]

Opening a tab is way faster than opening a new window.

Re:Back button.

[Lord of the Files]

Mozilla provides a site navigation toolbar. This includes "next", "prev", "up", "first", "last" and a whole bunch of other things (again, based on the contents of link tags in the page header). It also has the advantage of not overriding an existing button, which can be confusing. It's a reasonably thin toolbar, and can be set to only appear when there are link tags in the page header for it to display.

Re:Back button.

[Just Some Guy]

I have 7 folders of bookmarks, each with 4 to 10 pages in them. Every day I go down one by one and open the folders in tabs, one at a time, until I've visited all my sites. Saves lots of time.

So would an outdoor hobby. Or a girlfriend. Actually, pretty much anything short of smoking crack would be a better use of time than reading bedween 28 and 70 web pages every single day.

Re:Back button.

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

I really like what Opera did with the Forward button. Do a Google search, and you can use the Forward button (or the equivalent keyboard keys) to go forwards through the search result. I just tried it on a review site and it worked on one of the reviews! It appears that Opera will allow you to use forwards on any page with a "Next" link.

This is a good idea. Infact the W3C have already recommended buttons like that. But the implimentation in Opera is bad. It should be a seperate button, else it is confusing 2 differnt things: Going forward in your navigation history, and going to the next page of a site. The are 2 different things that should not be considered the same.

Well, now Opera has this much needed feature, and hopefully the other browsers will copy it from them.

I'm pretty sure that Mozilla already has this, it's probably somewhere in the View menu (I don't have it on my work box). Enable that toolbar, and you get things like Home, Previous, Next, etc.

Back button improvement? Nah, forward button is what needs the improvement...

Unless you have conducted a lot of testing regarding the back button--like these guys in the artical obviously have--then I can't really take any credibility in that claim. That's half the problem with bad GUI's--People just guessing what they think is right instead of getting out there with people and doing real research.
BTW, when they talk about the back button, I suspect that they also mean the forward button to.

Re:Back button.

[persaud]

Not a psychologist ... but you could read up on the Stroop Effect.

You can use a filtering web proxy (one of many) to mod pages and navigation for your cognitive taste. I'm writing a couple of OSS, cross-browser JS widgets for user-oriented mods. An early, IE-only prototype of no-click navigation (works, but ugly JS) is here.

Re:Back button.

[zapfie]

When this feature kicks in, the 'forward' button changes to a 'fast forward' button, using a double arrow instead of a single. Also, the fast forward button will only appear when the forward button would usually be greyed out (no pages in forward history).. so there is no ambiguity here, just added functionality.

Re:Back button.

[Anonymous Coward]

In IE you just shift-click a link to open it in a new window.

Re:Back button.

[sonamchauhan]

Count me in too ! :) I incessantly highlight text I'm reading on the webpage.

Re:Back button.

[Anonymous Coward]

Beautifull. works wonderfully how can I map it to a key in mozilla/5.0?

Re:Back button.

[mixmasta]

Well, the problem with MDI was that you had to manage all the windows thru another window. This was a pain for knowledgeable users and utterly confusing for newbies.

While tabs are practically the same idea, you don't have to manage anything, and the windows don't get hidden/lost, etc.

This makes all the difference.

Re:Back button.

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

It's still mixing 2 different ideas, that appear too similar for the user's good already.

Re:Back button.

[zapfie]

Tradeoffs like that are often made in interfaces, though. In this case, having two separate related buttons, where when one is active the other never is is a waste of space. For example, some browsers feature a single reload/stop button, since the two functions are related but fairly mutually exclusive

Next week on /.

[mschoolbus]

Building a better back better back button!

Re:Next week on /.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe we need a repost.slashdot.org

Well, crap.

[KefkaFloyd]

The site's already timing out. I like the back button, and any method to improve it (like the nice contextual menus that appeared in NS4 and IE4) would be a boon to my productivity. The article is the most scientific explanation of the "Back" button ever. However, some of the stuff they talk about sounds a lot like a function cured by Apple's SnapBack feature in Safari.

the usability of "back"

[loveandpeace]

This is a well-done study the highlights not only a proposed better use of the back button, but illustrates the hard science and methodology of usability studies. If we plan to break free of the standard keyboard-and-screen interface, studies such as these are the foundation. and what pretty pictures, too!

Re:the usability of "back"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's a well-done study with lots of hard science and methodology and paradigms and all that. They're going to screw with the back button and it won't work any more, I just know it.

Entropy

[Pac]

Are we now losing energy at every interaction? Are duplicates suffering entropic information loss? I am just asking this because last year this same story was much better.

Re:Entropy

[Anonymous Coward]

The discussion here would be much better if we all copied good comments from last time and posted them here.

Well,

[Omkar]

I don't know about you, but for me, the back button is a little thing on a toolbar, not a key.

Re:Well,

[Hall]

In IE, Opera, and at one time, Mozilla, your "back"-space key worked the same as the back button.

Re:Well,

[Anonymous Coward]

I got your back button right here.[IBM media access pro keyboard]

-handybundler

Re:Well,

[nld2thx]

alt-*back arrow* works like a champ

Re:Well,

[SomeGuyFromCA]

Still does in Mozilla.

Re:Well,

[Anonymous Coward]

does it? it works when im in windows, but doesn't when im in linux, where i have to use alt-left. is that because i messed up my configuration, or because its meant to be that way? also, can i change it so the backspace key works in linux too?

Re:Well,

[Anonymous Coward]

So, the back BUTTON has a shortcut key. Still is a button. Next...

Re:Well,

[Anonymous Coward]

Amend that. It works in Win32 Mozilla. YMMV under Linux.

Karma to burn

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

Yes I know this is a worthy undertaking, but with all the crap that's broken/wrong in Windows, couldn't they come up with a better use of time?

Re:Karma to burn

[G4M8I7]

This is true, that is exactly why i wish to move away from windows, but alas, i dont have the money for a new Mac, nor the smarts for linux.... so im stuck for now:( as are many people, which is why win"blows" is so prevailent

hey

[simontek2]

how is everyone this morning?

Re:hey

[Anonymous Coward]

Feeling pretty damn good to be honest, how are you motherfucker?

Re:hey

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thankyou.. Yourself?

Back button

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but did you use the 'back' button during that Googling session?

Last year's link

[Pac]

Here

Gestures are the way....

[GuyWithLag]

The biggest problem that I have with mozilla is its lack of gesture support. Whe I switch from galeon to mozilla, the context menu pops up once or twice before I remember....

Guess what my most-used gesture is: right-click-left-release...

Re:Gestures are the way....

[evilquaker]

The biggest problem that I have with mozilla is its lack of gesture support.

Mozilla has gestures: http://optimoz.mozdev.org. The gestures are even configurable (unlike Galeon's) with the prefs.js file.

Re:Gestures are the way....

[friedmud]

Actually moz has had gestures for a while: http://optimoz.mozdev.org/.

But something even better than gestures are the pie menus (found on the same page above, but also at: http://www.gamemakers.de/mozilla/radialcontext/) they are like gestures with a gui (indeed after you use them for a while you never look at the pie-menu any more, except to find obscure actions).

My favorite: RightClickandHold->UpRight->Down->Release (Closes the current tab)

Derek

Re:Gestures are the way....

[lostgnu]

Um, mozilla actually supports gestures. I've been using them to great browsing for sometime now.

Look at http://optimoz.mozdev.org and Radical Context for Mozilla.

Personally I feel Radical Context is better than simple gestures, but YMMV.

Re:Gestures are the way....

[Anonymous Coward]

gestures on moz Lack of gesture support? Sure its not user configurable but at least its some. Somebody code user defined gesture support as this developer has seem to have died.

Re:Gestures are the way....

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be rightclick-and-hold with a down+right diagonal drag for opera. Might be a confusing experience to switch from opera to mozilla or the other way around since RightClickandHold->UpRight->Down->Release equals "restore windowsize", at least in windoze.

Re:Gestures are the way....

[Anonymous Coward]

and my favorite gesture is...

Raise middle finger and point at cube mate

Very IE biased, isn't it?

[caluml]

Net surfers use the back button more than any other key.

Not me - I use Mozilla, and I just open links in a new tab and carry on reading. Then when I'm done, I just close the tabs.

If you haven't tried tabs yet - you should. Just remember to check the box that says "Open in background"

Re:Very IE biased, isn't it?

[chris09876]

I agree, tabs are great :-) Definitely the way to go in Mozilla. ...but I could see why they'd make the article IE-biased. Most of the people who use the internet are still using IE. When making generalizations about internet browsing experiences, it only makes sense to use the browser with a big monopoly.

Re:Very IE biased, isn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason it's so IE biased is that most people use IE. Even if Mozilla had no back button, the sheer number of IE users would make it the world's most popular browser function.

Re:Very IE biased, isn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I started using IE when netscape started crashing all the time. I've always "Open in New Window" by shift-left clicking. It's just as nice as tabs, but it seems I'm the only one who uses it.

I'm kind of tired of these "better back button" articles. My back button works just fine for me. I read the articles and they just seem pendatic. Those problems are too small for me to worry about, but then I'm a nerd. My wife still uses yahoo to search for pages when she has the URL, because she can't remember how to enter a URL into IE. She doesn't have problems with the back button either, because she never uses it.

Re:Very IE biased, isn't it?

[zonix]

I turn everything on in 'Tabbed browsing' preferences. In addition to 'open in background' enable:

- Ctrl+click and middle-click (opens in new tab)
- Ctrl+Enter (from URL field, opens in new tab)

This should be the default setup, really. Works wonder for downloading pr0n: press and hold down control key, click every thumbnail in sight, and the links will open in separate tabs in the background.

:-) z

Re:Very IE biased, isn't it?

[RobotRunAmok]

Well, sure, it's IE biased. Any study of general Web browsing habits will be IE biased. IE owns something like 96% of the marketplace, rightly or wrongly.

The mozilla guys could add a feature wherein their users flip webpages via psychokinesis and it would still only be a footnote in any story about what the majority does.

Damn spiffy footnote, but a footnote nonetheless...

Re:Very IE biased, isn't it?

[Tim Colgate]

Very IE biased, isn't it?

Actually, if you read the article, you'll find all the participants were using Netscape:

We gathered the data through the history and bookmark files that Netscape Navigator (versions 4.5-4.7) maintains. Netscape Navigator was the browser used by the participants in their everyday work, ...

Re:Very IE biased, isn't it?

[br0ck]

Many IE users don't bother with the back button either, but use Crazy Browser which adds a tabbed interface with middle-click to open a link and middle-click on the tab to close it. Personally I find the tabbed interface slicker and easier than in Opera or Mozilla. It also can groups of sites with on click. Any group can open on default and the last visited group will open all sites that were open when the browser was closed. It adds many shortcut keys like alt-enter to search Google. Best of all, it kills all popup windows and allows shutting off scripts, images, sounds, Java or whatever on a site-by-site basis.

Re:Very IE biased, isn't it?

[dr_zeus]

Apparently someone didn't read the article.

The test subjects were Computer Science postgraduates using Netscape 4.5/4.7, Not IE.

Re:Very IE biased, isn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the articles and they just seem pendatic.

That's pedantic!

Re:Very IE biased, isn't it?

[caluml]

By IE I meant any shit browser that does support tabs ;)

Hope that clears it up.

Where's the Info?

[metal_llama]

So they've programed a great back button. Cool. Now, I love the back button and all - I use it a lot - but I generally like to have a browser to go along with it. This makes no mention of the idea actually being implemented in any current or future browser.

Re:Where's the Info?

[Anonymous Coward]

They eliminated the browser part since most of the web is crap anyways. Or should that be "In Soviet-Russia the backbutton have a browser".

Loving Snap-back

[Space Coyote]

I personally love the Snap-back feature built into Safari, where, for example, if you do a google search, go to a result page, go several links deep and realize this isn't what you want, you just click the snap-back button and you're right back to your search results. This goes a long way to reducing my dependence on tabbed browsing, and is probably more intuitive for novice websurfers.

It works in a generic way for all websites, too, not just google, which is great.

Re:Loving Snap-back

[Moloch666]

Although this does sound like a nice useful feature. It seems it would still make more sense to open your results in a new window or tab. That way even if you found something you want, but you want to keep on searching it's still there. Then if you decided that it isn't what you were looking for you can close it and continue searching.

Re:Loving Snap-back

[Hawkins]

If only Safari didn't look like a bucket of ass and had a way to turn off all its "helpful" browsing improvements I might give it an honest try. As long as Chimera doesn't inherit Mozilla's feature-bloat, has tabbed browsing, and is nearly as fast as Safari (for most pages) I'll use it.

Re:Loving Snap-back

[barryfandango]

I'm a recent convert to tabbed browsing so i may be overenthused, but i think it's the cat's pyjamas.

I can open slashdot, a google search, a news site, etc. and click my mousewheel on every story that interests me as i scroll down the page. by the time i finish reading the front of the site, all the content I'm interested in has loaded in background tabs and is ready to be browsed with no wait time for downloads. Snap-back can't offer that kind of functionality.

Re:Loving Snap-back

[Mr_Silver]

I personally love the Snap-back feature built into Safari, where, for example, if you do a google search, go to a result page, go several links deep and realize this isn't what you want, you just click the snap-back button and you're right back to your search results.

Whats the difference between this and hitting the little arrow next to the "Back" icon and selecting the Google page?

Or in CrazyBrowser (and probably others), right clicking the tab and selecting "Tab Home"?

Re:Loving Snap-back

[Dalcius]

Oh, the euphoria might never go away. =P I regularly marvel at my entire system (Gentoo Linux) in general, and I've been using Linux for almost 3 years now. Galeon, the web browser I use, absolutely amazes me; they've got every feature I want, whether it's mouse gestures or right clicking the sites listed when you hit the arrow next to the back button.

I'm the same way regarding webpages; middle-click for about 20 seconds and then just browse. Like virtual desktops, I wonder how long it will take Microsoft to catch on to this awesome feature.

Re:Loving Snap-back

[Dalcius]

I just realized this isn't clear:

"or right clicking the sites listed when you hit the arrow next to the back button."

Add: to bring up a menu to open the link in a new tab, etc. Want to open a page in your history in a new tab without clicking back 5 times and waiting for the page to load, then clicking forward 5 times? *click click*

Another feature I'm curious to see when Microsoft will pick up is the select & paste feature of X Windows (I believe this is handled at the X level?). Select some text and middle-click. You've just copied and pasted. Wicked good.

Re:Loving Snap-back

[wornst]

In Safari, the snap-back feature teamed with actually using the menubar as a makeshift clip board you can do exactly what you say what you want to do. With Safari's intuitive bookmark interface removing those temporary bookmarks is a breeze. I do this all the time when I am researching.

One problem I admit, say when I am using westlaw, which doesn't automatically log you back in (seeing that it is a pay service) this procedure has major drawbacks. I would be nice if there was a research bar that snapped a picture or downloaded the page to your cache so that it really would be a wonderful research tool.

Re:Loving Snap-back

[MattHaffner]

You're comparing apples and oranges (pun intended?). I love tabs too, but you can do the same thing you're talking about in most browsers without tabs by opening links in new windows. Safari even has 'open windown in background' with cmd-shift-click. Map that to middle button and you'll not be much different than that particular nice feature of tabs.

The reason why this sucked (and still sucks) in Moz (at least on a Mac) is the speed or CPU hit of opening a new window and cycling among them. This is gone in Safari, as far as I'm concerned. Install Pith if you want a little clickable list of your open windows like your tabs. I'm kind of sad they open new windows staggered now in the second beta. When they all stacked on top of one another, cmd-~ to cycle among the windows was exactly like cycling through tabs. Bummer...

Anyway, what I meant to point out is that snap-back is a better back button, not a tab replacement. Tabs (or something like it) still would be a nice option to have in Safari.

Re:Loving Snap-back

[Eimi Metamorphoumai]

Btw, if you have middle click set to open in a new tab, you don't even have to right click and choose from the menu. You can middle click on the item in the history menu and open in a new tab. You can pretty much middle click ANYWHERE and open in a new tab.

Re:Loving Snap-back

[Dalcius]

That's always the trait of good software:

You think of a feature, try it out, and it's already there.

To be honest, I usually only find this with open source software. /end potential rant

Re:Loving Snap-back

[Moloch666]

I think I would just have to try it. Hopefully those features will creep into Konquerer. As I don't have a Mac to try it. Would be nice if they released a free Win32 or *nix compatible version of Safari. I enjoy trying different browsers, but Opera has flat out won me over especially on the Win32 end. Konq is great on FreeBSD, but I spend most of my time (gaming & browsing) on Win2k.

The ultimate back button.

[nesneros]

If I hit back enough do I end up using NCSA Mosaic? Or do I just end up in gopher?

Re:The ultimate back button.

[CodeManBob]

Actually you will end up in using ARCHIE!!!

Snap Back

[Petrox]

Apple's web browser, Safari, has a rather elegant alternative: the SnapBack feature. If you type in a web address and then dig deep into nested set of links, you can go back to your original page with the click of a button. You can set any page to be the page you snap back too as well. Makes for very quick and easy googling!

Just build it like this for now...

[Wolfier]

Make it skip those advertising links and go back to the first non-ad location.

Those back-button-disabled sites annoy me. It is MY back button, not doubleclick's.

Re:Just build it like this for now...

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen.

I want a back button, separate from the normal back button, that prevents all popups for all those damn pr0n sites that have all that popup bullshit when you try and leave.

I normally do leave popups on tho, so I still want a normal back button on as well.

Re:Just build it like this for now...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Those back-button-disabled sites annoy me."

If you stopped using internet explorer, that, and many other annoyances would disappear. For example., if you click "Back" in Mozilla (or galeon or kmeleon), it will skip over any "automatic-redirect" pages, and return you to the page you were on before you clicked the link.

Re:Just build it like this for now...

[Wolfier]

No it won't. I keep my Mozilla up-to-date and it does that too.

naively written

[thegoldenear]

the article says "(just 2 per cent of people use history, says some mid-1990s research)"
and how many people were using the web in the mid 90s?

and "Microsoft even gave a laptop computer and other support to the cause"
wow. a laptop.

Re:naively written

[blibbleblobble]

"just 2 per cent of people use history, says some mid-1990s research"

And those two percent were snoops looking for information on someone they disliked. Does anyone actually use the history on their own computer?

Re:naively written

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

And your post is any better?

It's a percentage, so the number of people is irelivant. You could arguee that browsing habits have changed over the years. But that figure sounds right to me. I don't use it that much myself. It's a very handy feature when you need it. But I don't think many people use it to it's full extent. That could be partly they way it's been implimented, or that people just don't need to use it that oftern.

And the laptop? It shows that MS obviously think these guys are on to something. MS doesn't just give out laptops to anyone you know.

-1 flambait, troll, redundant I say.

Re:naively written

[error0x100]

I occasionally use the history feature, if I am trying to get back to a site I visited recently but can't remember the URL, then it comes in handy. Otherwise, I don't really use it. I guess thats what its for though.

thegoldenear's comment though reminds of an incident some years back when I was browsing the job ads in a newspaper. The Java programming language at that time was three years old. This company was advertising a position that required a minimum of 5 years Java programming experience.

Re:naively written

[thegoldenear]

I know its a percentage. I wasn't saying it was irrelevant because so few people were using it, but that so few people were using it (and that they would have so few years of experience with their browsing software) that there wouldn't be enough information to base a good research judgement on.
and more-so, it just seemed really lame to be judging by research so very very old in Internet time.

and the laptop? maybe MS don't give much away for free but the way it was written in the article, the author sounded as though it was a big deal when to me it sounds like a pathetic crumb from a multi-billion dollar corporation

Re:naively written

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

it just seemed really lame to be judging by research so very very old in Internet time.

They might not have the money to that kind of testing. Good testing costs a lot of money, you have to pay the users, and set it all up etc. Maybe they'll do some more testing later on if nessesary.

and the laptop? maybe MS don't give much away for free but the way it was written in the article, the author sounded as though it was a big deal when to me it sounds like a pathetic crumb from a multi-billion dollar corporation

Keep in mind that this is in New Zealand. So it was probably MS's NZ office that gave them the laptop. They probably don't have the same amount of resources as MS's big USA HQ office.

Maybe they don't need anything more than a laptop anyway, they might just needed one so they can take it round for demonstrations etc.

Dupe, dupe, dupe, dupe of Earl, Earl, Earl

[EvilBuu]

If within half an hour of posting a story thirty readers have identified the story as a dupe, there must be some way the /. eds could just run submissions through a filter to detect dupes or not. 'Cause they sure ain't catching them on their own.

Re:Dupe, dupe, dupe, dupe of Earl, Earl, Earl

[Ratface]

It's almost like they need a special button or something. It could be called the "Back" button perhaps! ;-)

Re:Dupe, dupe, dupe, dupe of Earl, Earl, Earl

[Anonymous Coward]

One half of the aritcles that I find of interest are remarked as 'dupe' in the comments, however, I have neverseen the orignal. Perhaps 'dupes' are not so bad.

Re:Dupe, dupe, dupe, dupe of Earl, Earl, Earl

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad one can't mod a story as Redundant.

Re:Dupe, dupe, dupe, dupe of Earl, Earl, Earl

[pythorlh]

If within half an hour of posting a story thirty readers have identified the story as a dupe, there must be some way the /. eds could just run submissions through a filter to detect dupes or not

There is a way... You're reading it.
Slashdot is their filter.

The Power Of Goat

[Big Mark]

I use Phoenix and the mouse gestures plugin; this means I end up using the "open in new tab", "change tab" and "close tab" mouse gestures almost exclusively.

However, there is also a "go back" gesture, quite possibly the simplest of them all, and do you want to know what site caused me to use this quick escape?

Goatse!

Now, that's one back button I don't want to EVER have to press!

-Mark

Re:The Power Of Goat

[G4M8I7]

The back button is a very useful tool for goatse, or tubgirl, but shouldnt one check the url of the link before clicking it? hmmmm? genious

Re:The Power Of Goat

[yerricde]

shouldnt one check the url of the link before clicking it?

That's quite difficult if the link goes through a half-dozen redirect scripts before ending up at goatse.

Re:The Power Of Goat

[I didn't]

Unfortunately there's no way back if you opened it in new tab. (close tab wouldn't be quick enough)

Re:The Power Of Goat

[G4M8I7]

ture, i didn't think about that

Re:The Power Of Goat

[neonstz]

Just block the goatse-server in your ad-block/firewall/whatever.

wait a minute

[loveandpeace]

it took them eight years to figure out that people use the Back button even though they don't understand it???

puh-leez. i want a job on this team.

Re:wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to the world of acedamia. Those that can't do, teach.

Re:wait a minute

[teamhasnoi]

It only took /. a year to remember that this story was already posted?

It looks like Taco and crew need to go to some inefficency workshops, and improve their dupe to original story ratio. They may just show those 'Back' button researchers what true geeks are made of!

Re:wait a minute

[loveandpeace]

they take a lot of grief for duplicate stories, but let's face it: in web time a year is forever. How many stories have they posted in that time?

what they need is not (in)efficiency studies or any workshop of any kind. what they need is a librarian.

Re:wait a minute

[Anonymous Coward]

Or a memory, as do you---the other story was posted in December, which by no stretch of the imagination amounts to a year ago.

not feeling so good...

[Anonymous Coward]

a little sick... nasty headache. cann't really focus on my work

I want a button to take me WAY back...

[TopShelf]

To the days before pop-up ads and neverending torrents of spam!

Wrong science field

[lastberserker]

I'd wait for some kind physisist to attach a tiny time machine to my browser's back button...

Cache to speed up rendering of previous pages

[Anonymous Coward]

On an offtopic note, how come IE or opera render previously visited pages almost instantly, and mozilla and other Gecko based browsers take as much time as rendering a new page ?

In IE, it is practically never required to use the drop down box on the back button and jump up the tree. Hitting the bacspace a bunch of times is very fast. But mozilla takes so much time to render each previous page, that it becomes necessery to use the drop down box.

If it is due to using a cached copy of both HTML and JavaScript, is there any way to change that in Prefereces to back rendering of previsous pages faster ?

0.002 seconds saved

[T-Kir]

Shaving even 0.002 seconds off the back command is worthwhile because millions of button clicks worldwide will be a little more efficient, he says. "If we can save a tiny bit of frustration and confusion, that's the way to improve computer interfacing."

Well I'm glad they clarifyed that little detail, now I can sleep better at night knowing I've shaved a few clock cycles off my daily routine. I dread to think what the 'analysts' would say if they heard that, we'll be saving X amount of money per fiscal year by using this new back button... kinda straight out of Dilbert!

On a side note, (when I use Mozilla or Opera) the tabs come in handy... or if using IE, I tend to open most pages in new browser windows, so I have pages available at hand (still on dialup, so it does make a difference)... hehe maybe they're right about the 0.002 seconds!

Re:0.002 seconds saved

[jkabbe]

On the show Triumph of the Nerds they described Steve Jobs making that exact same argument to one of the coders of the original Mac with respect to boot time. "X seconds off the boot time" times "Y number of users" equals huge time savings every day (back when people turned off their computers at night no doubt - can't do that now or I'll drop in the Seti@home rankings!)

Re:0.002 seconds saved

[noda132]

Shaving even 0.002 seconds off the back command is worthwhile because millions of button clicks worldwide will be a little more efficient, he says. "If we can save a tiny bit of frustration and confusion, that's the way to improve computer interfacing."

What I'm more interested in is how they propose that keeping thousands of thumbnails in memory (not to mention thousands of web page titles and urls) and displaying enormous menus including graphics will somehow take less time for my computer to render than the simple menu of ten titles I get with Galeon.

And here I was thinking that making a more simple interface would be the thing that makes things 0.002 seconds faster. I guess they've done enough research to prove me wrong!

Re:0.002 seconds saved

[sbillard]

-5 Offtopic. But you just reminded me of a high-ranking exec at a big financial services company near Boston MA.
This guy hired consultants to rewrite the Microsoft DINA so that a single key would suffice to generate the logon prompt, instead of Ctrl+Alt+Del. He spent a lot of money on this. He felt justified becuase he insisted he reduced the number of keystrokes by 66% for that every-day effort of his underlings despite our arguments to the contrary. He was able to make claims of increased productivity and was rewarded for it.
True story - Real life Dilbert PHB episode.

Why not a 'tree' back button?

[slashbofh]

One thing that has always irritated me about the back button is the lack of a 'tree' effect. In the notation of the paper, lets say I did this:

a->b->c->d<=>c<=>b->e

Now with the stand back button, or even their modified results, I tend to see:

[b,a], where what I would like to see is something like:

[b, [c,d] , a]

I like mouse gestures, and I find the only one I really ever use is back, and tabbed browsing does get rid of a lot of the single back, but I'm suprised that this 'tree' view hasn't been investigated/implemented.

Re:Why not a 'tree' back button?

[Anonymous Coward]

I use tabbed browsing to achieve that 'tree' effect.
Whenever I see something worth seeing, but I want to keep record of the current content I open the link in a new tab. It's not exactly what you're asking for (because you cannot determine the branching point), but it works for me. Whenever I get tired of that branch I just close the tab.

BTW, I use Mozilla.

Re:Why not a 'tree' back button?

[MattJ]

"but I'm suprised that this 'tree' view hasn't been investigated/implemented."

Oh, but it has. You're describing HistoryTree, my award-winning browser plugin from 1996:-)

Here, check the Wayback Machine:

http://web.archive.org/web/19970121043309/http:/ /s martbrowser.com/

-Matt Jensen

Re:Why not a 'tree' back button?

[plsander]

OS/2's first browser, Web Explorer (I think that was i'ts name ), would display a browsing history tree. Users could click on any node in the tree and jump to that spot in the history. I think it even displayed the cached status of the page.

Re:Why not a 'tree' back button?

[CoolGuySteve]

I was just thinking of this a couple days ago and now this article pops up on slashdot. I think it would be incredibly efficient to be able to click a mouse button or select an option on a pop-up menu that would display a tree with the last branch at the position of your cursor. I often find myself clicking back to a site so I could find one that branched off it (especially if I took a wrong turn). I use tabs but find it's a sloppy remedy since I have to register wether or not this site is worth opening in a new window.

I even thought about making a modification to ELinks (awesome text browser BTW) but then figured I was too lazy to see it through to completion.

Also, speaking of input systems, I'm addicted to mouse gestures. Sometimes I'll be in some file manager and I'll right click + drag right to go back before realizing that it doesn't work there. This kind of interface confusion is most befuddling in windows because middle clicking in IE brings up a handy scroll tool that lets you scroll really fast while middle clicking in the file explorer does not. I thought they were supposed to be the same program!

Anyways, I'm on a tangent of a tangent so I'll click submit.

Re:Why not a 'tree' back button?

[antiphon]

Your concept is similar to what I have been thinking, but the implementation is not exactly the same. I think that we shouldn't get rid of Back and Forward, but instead add a third button called Path which will allow one to traverse the history in completely nonlinear fashion. Pressing the button at any point would review a tree of exactly how the user has navigated from each page. Example: Page A
===>Page B
=====>Page C
===>Page D
=====>Page E
Page F
===>Page D
=====>Page A
========>Page G

Thus, from any point in the session, the user can choose to revist the page he wants, no matter where in the history he is currently at.

Mouse gestures are not necessary and will only confuse people

One more thing: Why doesn't /. allow <pre> tags? Shouldn't be a problem if you close 'em...

Re:Why not a 'tree' back button?

[Anonymous Coward]

You need support for the LINK tag, which has been in HTML forever, but doesn't have much mainstream browser support. (Mozilla had something, but it broke and nobody fixed it, AFAICT.)

This supports such concepts of "Next", "Prev", and "Up" (index).

Most classic document mgmt systems support these ideas, but for some reason every one gets by on the Internet with Back and Forward.

Re:Why not a 'tree' back button?

[Lord of the Files]

Actually the link tag is still supported in mozilla. They just took it out of netscape 6 because of problems, and have that toolbar off by default. View -> Show/Hide -> Site Navigation Bar -> Show Always will turn it on for you. Very handy little feature. I just wish more sites supported it.

Re:Why not a 'tree' back button?

[Trogre]

FWIW, the browser in OS/2 Warp had this capability.
That's good.

I used it for over a year.
That's good.

For the life of me I can't remember what the browser was called.
That's bad.

Better back button?

[ScriptGuru]

I think the best innovation in back buttons is by far the 5 button mouse. It makes it so your mouse never has to leave the actual page (to go to a toolbar).

But more importantly, it rationalizes the existance of the pinky.

Re:Better back button?

[i chose quality]

me personally hates them!

i need at least one area where there is no opportunity for unwanted clicking...

Re:Better back button?

[jkabbe]

The pink is for putting in the corner of your mouth so you look appropriately *evil*

Mouse Gestures

[Professor North]

I've been a Phoenix user for some time now, and I really find it superior to IE in many ways. Why? Tabbed browsing, the ability to customize it, great community support, and the most important factor to me.... the Optimoz project and it's implementation of mouse gestures.

I'd estimate that I use Phoenix 99.9% of the time I'm browsing, thus... I use IE sparingly. When I do use IE, I can notice the difference in ease of use almost immediately.

To me, there is no dilemma in terms of what browser to use. Phoenix/Mozilla and far superior to IE, not to even mention Opera's superiority to it.

Re:Mouse Gestures

[Anonymous Coward]

'more efficent' depends on the user. i normally always keep one hand on the keyboard, so i prefer being able to use the backspace key
also, if im reading long articles, i dont touch the mouse at all, so im very glad about being able to manouver without it

The Mind Boggles!

[turgid]

You can make a science out of the "back" buttons on web browsers? What next, leisure and sport science?

Re:The Mind Boggles!

[Anonymous Coward]

Check this out.

Arizona State's former department of EXERCISE SCIENCE and PHYSICAL EDUCATION

Safari has a smarter back button

[skymester]

This was discussed here before,
but in the meantime Apple has introduced safari wich has a smarter back button

Back and snapback

[bpbond]

Apple's new browser (Safari) has a "snapback" feature, in effect a second back button that goes back in the stack to the last page loaded via a typed-in URL or bookmark. The user can also mark any page to be snapped back to.

This addresses one of the issues the authors of this study are looking at (getting out of a deeply-nested site), without modifying the familiar stack-based 'back' behavior used by all browsers.

Re:Back and snapback

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Please put down you crack pipe and re-read the artical. The main point is not getting out of a deeply nested site. But to revise the way the history is recoreded, so that you never get pages that vanish out of the history list, which happens in all major browsers that I know of because they are stack based. The point is they should not be. It's a subtle difference, but it's one that will make things clearer/easier/more logical to the user.

Page thumbnails

[gmuslera]

Maybe is just me, but looking that page thumbnails I will tend to force my eyes to get more details of what I viewing, this could cause more visual fatigue?

Also in the scheme where you go a -> b -> c -> d <- c <- b and then the browser history state results of [a, d, c, b] could lead to some non clear transitions (i.e. the back page of d is a) if I don't misunderstood, that can be more confusing.

Anyway, middle mouse button + browser tabs + maybe mouse gestures + a bit of common sense seems to improve a lot the defects of poor back button design.

FFS!

[kahei]

It's a stack of visited pages... but instead of being wiped when the process ends, it's persistant, like a history list! Incredible! I'm amazed they haven't patented it yet!

I'm sorry. I don't normally post 'this article sucks' posts, but in this case, it's just so incredibly pathetically tragic, that I just had to. Once again, I'm sorry, and so I'm sure is the guy who posted this wholly and unforgivably lame article.

If he isn't sorry, that is a problem and should be fixed

.

Good idea, bad implementation

[M.C. Hampster]

First, I like the idea of a gesture based back and forward button. I know I use those buttons often. However, they implented it using client-side Javascript code on the page, which seems strange. Also, they made the gesture a left-click and then a flick of the mouse either left or right. That also seems like a weird way to input the gesture. If you happen to be over a link when you left-clicked, it might follow through the link. I would rather see gesture only, or perhaps a right click and gesture.

It is a good idea though. I believe it says that Opera and a certain version of Netscape support it now.

oh dear

[Anonymous Coward]

"Research by Cockburn and others"

What a name. WHat was his parents smoking?

Improving UI's

[beofli]

A User Interface (for a browser) is effective if it connects to the workings of the brain, which works associatively: It associates concepts with a timeline (yesterday I visited a website about dogs), it associates causal relationships (after I found a dog I searched for dogfood) and it associates concepts with other concepts (the dogfood contained some fital vitamins which turned out to be important for dogs).

Um....

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we need to fire the researcher(s) who are wasting money writing a paper on how to improve the back button. How about the researchers get off their asses and actually produce something, ie a browser that uses this newfound and groundbreaking (sarcasm here) technology they have researched.

Deja Vu

[teamhasnoi]

IE has an annoying habit of clearing the text boxes of a page when I get a timed out page and hit the 'back' button, say when posting to /. (slower than ever!?)

Chimera and Phoenix keep that information in the box, saving me from having to copy the text, just in case.

A feature I would like similar to 'back' would be to reopen the last page I was on when I last closed the browser. Often, I close the window and find that I still need some info that was on that last page. I hate browser history ie: I have that turned off, so I can't hunt through the history to quickly find the page.

That feature would be nifty. Or something to make me less of a spaz.

Re:Deja Vu

[the endless]

A feature I would like similar to 'back' would be to reopen the last page I was on when I last closed the browser. Often, I close the window and find that I still need some info that was on that last page.

Mozilla can do this... under Edit > Preferences > Navigator is the following...

When Navigator starts up, display:

( ) Blank Page
(x) Home Page
( ) Last Page Visited

Re:Deja Vu

[Jugalator]

Opera both preserves text in text boxes when using Back and also let you restore the browser state, down to the tabs opened and the amount you've scrolled down on each tab, when you open the browser. You can also configure Opera to start with a saved tab configuration, much like I think Phoenix let you do as well.

Re:Deja Vu

[eglamkowski]

Yes, having a new browser window remember the "back" of the most recently closed browser would also be very handy to me as well.
Ah well.

News?

[cgenman]

So, they have a back button that is linear instead of making weird jumps, stays in memory after shutting down, and can have any number of pages stored? Congratulations, You've just invented Opera! Sheesh, if they really wanted to speed up the back button you would think they would reinvent mousegestures or 5 button mice.

I ignored this the first time it came around. I took it in strides the second time. But this time I just have to say it: This is not news! Nothing they are talking about is new or newsworthy. The browsing world does not consist of I.E. and Netscape. There is also Konqueror, ICab, Opera, Lynx, Phoenix, Arachne, XMosaic, Omniweb, and a host of others. Some of those back buttons behave in a similar fasion. The only thing mentioned in the article that none of the above do is provide little thumbnails of the pages, but many of them cache the entire page so that thumbnails are unnecessary.

Please, people. If you are going to be doing a major research project into improving other people's online experience, for crying out loud do your homework and find out what is out there. It's called exploratory research, and your thesis advisor should have required you to do some before beginning. I know, I know, they ARE the thesis advisors, which says a lot about the University of Canterbury.

Re:News?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

This post ladies and gentlemen, is why Linux will have along, hard road to get onto the desktop of Joe Users' PC.

Out of interest, which of the browsers you listed already do what the artical says? I've used most of them, and they all have the same say of using the back button.

BTW, multi-button mice and gestures are irelivant here, they don't change the way the back button works, they provide an easier way to access the command to use it.

It can be worse

[Pac]

You keep hitting back in OpenOffice and end up in vi. You hit back too much in Chatzilla and find yourself in talk.

You backtrack in VisualAge for Java and end up in Simula. Keep going and your code become FORTRAN.

Re:It can be worse

[p3d0]

Yes, you have successfully demonstrated that you got someone else's joke.

Re:It can be worse

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Help! I kept hitting "u" in vi, and now I'm stuck in ed!

hello
?
is this working
?
i
?
1
?
end
?
quit
?
x
?
q
localhost:~>

back button?

[interstellar_donkey]

Net surfers use the back button more than any other key.

There's a back button on my keyboard? Here and all this time I've been using the oh so difficult 'alt-left arrow'.

Re:back button?

[Voytek]

backspace is soooo much more efficient

Re:back button?

[adamruck]

in ie the backspace key is the same thing as hitting the back button up on the menu bar... so you could think of it as a "back button"

Re:back button?

[Jugalator]

I'm personally using the fourth mouse button. Fits perfectly under the thumb. :-)

Mouse Gestures

[Elvisisdead]

Someone's a little late to the party. The mouse gestures in Opera are way more effective than any buttons or "keys".

An idea...

[NorthDude]

Would it not be usefull to have available a graph of the visited links along with or instead of the foward and back button?

You could have a popup window or something which would display thumbnails of all visited pages in a "linked" way. You could then select the thumbnail to wich you want to get back. It could also, maybe, display a list of all links (a href) in a given pages and some other informations...

And, something I would really love as a feature, persistence of this history. There is already an "history" of the typed URLs, but most of the time, I search in Googles and click thru the links to get where I want, so a back/forward button history would really make my day!

Just my 0.02$...

Re:An idea...

[Suidae]

Thats what I've been asking for. I want a tree view in my back button, so when I navigate back to a page and then forward down a new path, it doesn't wipe out my previous path. I don't want thumbnails of the page tho, too big, and I never recognize them after drastic rescaling anyway. But I can usually recall about how many branches ago I saw that other page that I want to get back to.

I disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

...I never use the back button, I only move forward. It's negativity like the back button that is ruining this country.

Re:I disagree

[00klaDM0k]

For those still using the back button, I have one question. Why do you hate America?

Re:I disagree

[Doctor O]

I don't hate America. I disagree with, and distrust the Bush Administration. And I disagree with it loudly, because I hate what it did to the world I live in. The point is, that you, the American people, have to understand that, if someone says he hates America, he doesn't mean *you*. He hates what the Government does. Maybe you have that in common. Hopefully he does. You aren't attacked. Your government is. Any thinking being knows that *you* aren't doing *shit* to him, so there's no reason to hate you. I better hit submit now.

Re:I disagree

[00klaDM0k]

I was referring to this sort of thing

Re:I disagree

[Doctor O]

ACK, didn't get that one. I even forgot to write that what I hate about America most that it *doesn't* have a back button to revert it to a state where it isn't the world's hugest single danger. *g*

why a button?

[adamruck]

instead of having a back button... why dont they make a little box showing a tree of all the pages you went to... maybe around the edges of the box you could have up,down, left, right arrows also.

You could make it so that you can set how many pages are shown in the tree relative to where you are. Set the background color, how the pages are represented(path, page title, etc), set some hot keys for quick access, and so on.

What would be really cool is to have this whole thing done up in 3d.... maybe some sort of jagged tree structure...

well I guess the whole point here is that why do we have to have a "back button". Standards are good, but lets try a new interface, and some new functions.

I want *just* a back button

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that's right, I want a back button that does nothing more than display the previous page. Both MSIE and Opera will usually reload the previous page when you hit the back button. At home on dial-up and at work on our overloaded T1, this makes browsing painfully slow. You've already downloaded the page, so having to download it again and again is a waste. How about fixing the current back buttons before adding extra features?

Old Style

[morie]

Just read the article and clicked "back". Old Style. Worked for me...

5 Button mice remove need for back button also!

[skogs]

I think everyone should purchase 5 button mice. I have it mapped to back, and forward. I don't need to move my mouse pointer across the screen at all...in fact I don't even look at teh toolbar at the top. My thumb goes back to where I just left...and my pinky goes forward to the thing I just backed up from. Its beautiful...and damn is it fast.

No mouse movement at all...just clickclickclick.

Sorry

[Pac]

The Department of Web Browser Backtracking and Forwarding Studies has no open positions at this time. Leave your resume and phone number at the receptionist desk and we will let you know when an opportunity for re-applying arrises.

Re:Sorry

[loveandpeace]

thanks for this: being a contractor in 'questionable economic times,' you can't imagine the amount f doublespeak i've encountered.

i look forward to seeing the future posts for jobs with a forward-looking scope on back-ness.

Similar to Safari Snapback

[goombah99]

The article divides up usage patterns of the back button in to modalities. the main one being jumping back to the portal entry page after burrowing down a thread. this is exactly what the SAFARI snapback does.

Re:Similar to Safari Snapback

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

I don't see how it could be similar at all. The snapback button takes you to the last time you entered a URL (or visited the site root?).

This is basicly revising how the back button history is created and used. And for the better I might add.
I suspect that Apple will incorporate this in to Safari though. Hopefully before the final release. :)

It's funny because

[NorthDude]

I always thought that 'Slashback' were those stories that the Editors finds to be duplicates but post anyway...

Mouse gestures

[jetmarc]

Opera (www.opera.com) features mouse-gestures which allow you to go back and forth (and some other stuff as well) very quickly. Basically you press the right mouse button and move the mouse left (to go back) or right (to go forward). That's it. It works anywhere on the page.

David Gelernter/Tech TV / Big Thinkers comment

[adzoox]

There comes a point where computers and interfaces are either so easy that they become too difficult for an adult mind to understand, or so difficult, that it becomes easy to critcize them; or not use them at all.

That was the general idea of his comment. The thing that most people don't understand in the hardware/software innovation areas is that Speech Recognition, Gestures, Pen input is all great, but with clunky interfaces, poor pattern problems, and standardized, almost Pavlovian use of keyboards for input and mice for movement on a screen. Very few, if any are ever gonaa change unless you do something radical like Apple Computer and just make it standard. IE, they pushed USB and no floppy and have had a 70% adoption of the two concepts.

This is the general reasoning behind the PDA adoption rate. Who wants to look at a tiny screen? But really, who wants the frustration of character recognition, "I WROTE D DAMMIT, not an O!" (only a small population, even in face of lots of units sold, actually learned Graffiti well enough to use it)

Benefit of tabs in Windows 9x

[yerricde]

I was totally flummoxed when I saw how everyone was raving about tabbed browsing

Tabs take up less of the Windows 9x system resource heap than individual windows do. Before browsers supported tab browsing, it wasn't practical to keep a load of tabs onscreen and use the Taskbar to switch them because you'd quickly run into the 64 KB limit of Windows 9x's user.exe heap. (Windows NT doesn't have such a limit.) You surely couldn't keep several browser windows onscreen, each with its own set of tabs.

What's really frustrating....

[Asprin]

This guy Cockburn sounds like those soft-"science" alarmist wonks that make up a socio-phychological disease so they can get a federal grant and a book deal.

Sure, most people have trouble understanding page histories and navigation, but this guy seems to be willing to go to great lengths to make something that is arguably *too* simple, abundantly complicated. The problem people have isn't with the 'Back' button, but the 'Forward' button, and Cockburn doesn't even realize it.

Re:What's really frustrating....

[TheLink]

It's because of the resulting choice "tree". After clicking back one or more times, if you click on any link, you end up pruning a whole branch of links.

Kinda obvious, but the users who won't understand probably need things simple and less powerful. Making more choices blatantly available would just confuse them.

As is the choices are already available: Power users could just open lots of windows with each link (middle mouse button, or shift click), thus keeping interesting branches active. The main trouble I find is the browser crashing or the O/S running out of resources or crashing. So I figure rather have more stable software than a fancy back or forward button.

Re:What's really frustrating....

[Asprin]

Plus, if they really wanted to make things easier-to-find for people (like my Mother-In-Law), they'd brew up virtual _temporary_ multi-colored post-it notes (maybe you could write on them? No! Additional complexity introduced by writing is BAD!) that would stay where you stuck them on the sides of the web page. To go back to that page, you click the post-it. Of course, few people can deal with the fact that the computer can have several things open at once, so most users run everything full-screen, which would render the post-its off the screen where you can't see them.

Screw it! We're hosed! Somebody's just going to have to build a single-purpose appliance for web and email for non-tech users! Oh, wait, that failed, too. Nope, we're hosed.

Re:What's really frustrating....

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Kinda obvious, but the users who won't understand probably need things simple and less powerful. Making more choices blatantly available would just confuse them.

And exactly how is erasing part of the history list making the back button more powerfull?
This "better back button" is simpiler and more powerful. It should have been like this in the first place. But it wasn't for some reason. And since the difference is so suble, nobody ever though to try and correct it until now.

Re:What's really frustrating....

[notsteve]

...is people who love the site of their own opinions.

I happen to know Andy and he's an excellent scientist. At least year's CHI, he gave an outstanding presentation on 2D, 2.5D and 3D interfaces. It was one of the best received papers of the show. How familiar are you with his work? And for that matter, what the hell are you talking about?

Dr. Cockburn is outstanding at usability studies and testing his hypotheses. He excels at accounting for confounding variables and maintaining internal and construct validity in his experiments. He also takes criticism quite well.

The funny thing is that the back button stuff is the least of his HCI research.

All that being said, yes. There are social scientists who are full of shit. And you're worse than the lot, as you don't have a fucking clue who or what you're talking about. Not that it stops you.

Re:What's really frustrating....

[TheLink]

How does the back button erase part of the history list? AFAIK it doesn't.

Who's talking about making the back button more powerful? Not me.

I'm talking about keeping the back button simple for users. It just goes back in a particular way.

You want to add a feature, add a button (look at IE). You don't lightly change a feature millions of users are using or abusing daily in possibly unexpected ways, having their own satisfactory theory of how it works (whether wrong or right).

You don't just change the behaviour of phone buttons or the layout - e.g. what about blind people (some could figure it out eventually - they might figure the button is wrong because the tone is different). The fancy nonstandard buttons should be kept separate from the basic 3 x 4 block. The rotary dialers should always have the numbers and finger places in a certain place etc.

Sure there are exceptions, but you shouldn't change a design lightly. And I don't think this guy's idea is worth changing the way the button works. Yeah its nice and all that, but that's not reason enough.

Re:What's really frustrating....

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

OK, you're sitting here reading my reply right now. Lets say you have come here from your /. user profile.

Now, click the back button, and choose a different link. How do you get back to my post? You can't. It was erased from the history list, because it is stacked based. Once you go back down the stack, and choose something different, everything above the stack is cleared. This is the flaw in the back button.

What are they proposing? I'm not sure of the exact implimentaion, but it is more liner, so you would probably just hit back twice, and you'd be at my post again.

Forget the phone anologies, they hold some bearing, but the keypad isn't flawed, and it's more simple and universal to begin with.

The whole point is to make it better for users, because it behaves more how they would expect the back button to work. So that's why it's worth chaning it. They not trying to make it more different, they trying to match it even better to the users expectations, so your argument about not chaning the UI acctualy supports this improved back button if anything.

Tabs use fewer Windows 9x system resources

[yerricde]

It's just as nice as tabs, but it seems I'm the only one who uses it.

Are you on Windows XP, or do you just run out of Windows 9x's limited "system resources" after about a dozen new windows? Mozilla with 10 tabs open takes fewer "system resources" than IE with 10 windows open.

Can you submit form in new tab?

[yerricde]

I use Mozilla, and I just open links in a new tab and carry on reading

Try replying to a comment here on Slashdot and opening the "Preview" in a new tab.

No wait, you can't because Mozilla currently doesn't support opening the result of a form submission in a new window or tab (b.m.o bug 17754).

Same here...

[BrokenHalo]

I mostly use middle-click to open new tabs in the background (in mozilla) and just kill the tabs when I've finished with them. I almost never use the back button any more.

better back button?

[oliverthered]

it's called tabs.

Smarter History

[Alric]

People are posting ideas about treeview back buttons and different back lists.

I use my History archive for this. I think the history archive could contain a little more "intelligence" in storing previously visited links, and I wish that Mozilla offered a "This Session" history folder that only contained sites/pages visited by the current instance of a browser.

History + configurable 5/7 button mouse + tabbed browsing = a pleasant navigation system.

However, it is good to always question the accepted method of interface design. So, I can't get too down on the article.

interresting proposal, hope it's not patented yet

[bobKali]

As I was reading their example, something like:
a -> b c -> d ->e
With their temporal list of {b,a,c,d,e} I had to wonder whether that was a more useful list than simply keeping {a,b,a,c,d,e}. I realise that their list would tend to eliminate duplicate entried of the same page, but wouldn't the other list be a closer mirror of the actual pages in the actual order visited? It may be that some people think in terms of "I want to be back at the page I was at 7 pages back" rather than navigating by looking at each page. And I think this difference might be significant if we had a button that could travel back several pages at once (in an unknown method other than the pull-down page title thing that most back buttons now have. I dunno, maybe a scroll-bar type button - or using the mouse wheel to scroll the pages rather than the current screen.)

Yes, you're right.

[I didn't]

My dupes detector.

Wow .. ironic isnt it

[RembrandtX]

I hit my back button to return to ./ less than 2 paragraphs into that .pdf about using the back button.

insensitive clods, they are!

[i chose quality]

so if aol-hugging grandma wants to page back on her shiny grandson-sponsored Pentium 100 the funky thumbnailed back button won't turn into a back-in-5-minutes button?

thanks in advance

Use middle button instead of left

[Daniel Vallstrom]

How hard can it be?p

In related news...

[InadequateCamel]

...if /. keeps recycling articles the back button will become obsolete because the forward content will mirror the backward content.

Where's the up button?

[Bizaff]

It's not as useful as a back button, and not all sites are organized in a way to make it useful. But sometimes I think to myself, "Self.. I wish I had an up button on my browser."

On this train of thought.. would it be that difficult to put one into Mozilla? Everytime I sit down to look into it, some other shiny object comes along.. oo, tin foil

Re:Where's the up button?

[PigleT]

Konqueror comes with Up as standard - it used to be mapped to Alt-up as well. Galeon has one, if you customize the toolbar in question.
I think there's one available for Phoenix in the form of a plugin somewhere, but I really can't remember :)

Really

[RedWolves2]

'Net surfers use the back button more than any other key.

Yeah! No kidding! You should have seen the amount of users hit the back button when they saw this article! New record!

From an IE user...

[Anonymous Coward]

I know this place is a bit anti-microsoft, but I'll admit: I use interent explorer and a nifty little microsoft 5-button optical mouse with "back" and "forward" buttons.

1. 90% of the time I open links in a new window. (I hate those "clever" javascript links that won't let you do that...)
2. I rarely ever use back because most pages are dynamic, so I know I'm still going to have to hit f5 if I want to see the news.
3. I almost exclusively use the back button on my mouse if I need to go "back" for any reason. (Sometimes you have to go back past a page with automatic redirection, and it's handy to be able to pick exactly which page you want to go back to from the drop-down list off the back button on the browser.)
4. I'll admit that browser tabs might be nice, but I do just fine with the "tabs" at the bottom of the screen by the start button.

Why do I need a better back button? I don't.

Back button

[Blueice88]

Before i use the back button, but right now i Use the Alt+ for view the next page.I prefer use the commands of keyboard.What are you think about?best regards.

what fine academic detachment, from reality

[kraksmoka]

Finally, the improved back remembers pages visited days ago. Explorer and Netscape both delete back memory when the program is closed. Not so with Cockburn's improved version.

oh, it's been improved to be that way? in the early days of the internet, all the questions i ever fielded from the computarded were, "how do i erase where i've been so nobody else knows?".

kids don't want their parents to know. guys definately don't want their women to know. and nobody at all wants their government to know where they've been surfing. does the super back button have an erase the back button feature built in???? that's all anyone really wants anyway.

figures, academia always seems to nail their heads right on all the internet hits.

best back buttons around today are on Mac revs of Mozilla, IE and most mac browsers. CMD + -- = go back . i jones for it on pc's, it rules. course it did wear out the left arrow key on my keyboard after a few years of going back :)

Re:what fine academic detachment, from reality

[Evil Attraction]

"guys definately don't want their women to know [...] where they've been surfing

Woman: - "Aha! I can see you've been visiting www.victoriassecret.com lately. What do you have to say to your defense?"
Man: - "You definitely need new underwear, bitch! At least that wrap ugly stuff into something nice, will you!?"

Re:what fine academic detachment, from reality

[Anonymous Coward]

best back buttons around today are on Mac revs of Mozilla, IE and most mac browsers. CMD + -- = go back . i jones for it on pc's, it rules. course it did wear out the left arrow key on my keyboard after a few years of going back :)

Try Alt + left-arrow in IE.

Re:what fine academic detachment, from reality

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

This artical is not about removing the option to erase the users' history, which is already in most browsers. I didn't see anywhere in the artical them suggesting that history could not be deleted if the user wished to do so. So what is you point?

You do realise that you can view the history in most browsers anyway? This is just a way of getting at it better, I'm sure most users would like this.

The matter of disposing of a users history is a totaly seperate matter and should have no relivance on this artical.

Re:what fine academic detachment, from reality

[kraksmoka]

no, it is an article about adding the history to the back button. users don't want it, or it would have migrated there already.

WARNING!! UNFAIR USE OF GOOGLE TO MAKE A POINT BELOW. THIS IS NOT FOR THE WEEK OF HEART OR MIND, THAT MEANS YOU WINDOWS USERS.

compare the amount of programs to erase internet history and the accompanying advertising to the amount of programs to add internet history to back button. If that doesn't say it all, I don't know what does . . . .

Re:what fine academic detachment, from reality

[dupper]

Perhaps you should try alt+leftarrow or backspace (when not active in a textbox) on a PC browser.

A little less "krak" for your "smoka" pleasure?

Key?

[archetypeone]

I'm lost - is the back key the one next to the any key?

Cockburn

[nycsubway]

Ouch... thats gotta hurt.

What would be nice..

[ackthpt]

Would be disabling javascript on selected pages. I.e. the ability to right-click->open-page-in-new-window/tab-with-java -disabled

I think I could love that. Oh, and the ability to disable page reloads on back.

One of the worse offenders IMHO is Google when opening cached copies or a failed search, but automatic search on something it thinks is like the search item. I'd rather a failure and leave it at that, perhaps with the hint of other possibilies, but the auto thing is a bastard.

Re:What would be nice..

[smilinggoat]

Would be disabling javascript on selected pages. I.e. the ability to right-click->open-page-in-new-window/tab-with-java -disabled.

That is sort of possible in Mozilla, Netscape, and Phoenix using Tabbed Extensions. Once a tab is open it allows you to right-click on it and change its "Permissions" such as "Allow Plug-ins," "Allow Javascript," "Show Images," etc.

Re:What would be nice..

[Anonymous Coward]

Disabling Active-X like this would be nice too...

Re:What would be nice..

[Ctrl-Z]

Well, if that's adequate for you, then you should really use the Preferences Toolbar. It gives you the Fonts/Colors/Images/JavaScript/User Agent configuration in your toolbar.

I think the point though was that you can't do that until the tab is loading or loaded.

Re:What would be nice..

[graveyhead]

Oh, and the ability to disable page reloads on back.

I think what you are talking about is actually a meta-refresh command, used to forward you to another page, and not an explicit "reload" done with Javascript. The problem with "disabling" it is that the back button is actually functioning correctly... it takes you back one page. Problem is that the meta-refresh takes over again and forwards you back to the page you just left! The trick always has been a sort of well-timed double-click on back, or pull down the back menu & pick the entry 2 items back.

Simple solution!

[Openadvocate]

Just make a fancy mouse over animation and another one when you click on it. That gives you about a year to make a real new function.

This is the first time. . .

[kfg]

I've actually seen someone go so far as to state that an undetectable savings adds up world wide, and thus saves *me* frustration and confusion.

"Why yes, we made the red light 0.002 seconds shorter. Sure you don't notice it, but just think how many people drive through that light every day. It adds up to a total savings of ten seconds a day. Wouldn't you like to get home ten seconds quicker?"

I'd like to know what brand of coffee they've been drinking. It must be kick ass stuff.

These are the same people who think saving me ten seconds a day on mouse movement makes me more productive. They don't know me very good, do they? Here's a clue interface optimization guy, mouse movements don't come out of my productive time, they come out of my staring into space and making pointless movements to make it *look* like I'm being productive time.

People aren't machines. If we don't bloody well feel like being productive we'll fuck your efficiency plans every time.

We always have.

KFG

Re:This is the first time. . .

[Evil Attraction]

"These are the same people who think saving me ten seconds a day on mouse movement makes me more productive."

For some of us those ten seconds would actually multiply our productivity!

Which do you think will happen first?

[BitwizeGHC]

1) Mozilla will incorporate this behavior into its 1.3 series before Microsoft gets around to it.

2) Microsoft will patent the idea, even though the inventor said "the concept is in the public domain".

3) Prerequisite CowboyNeal option.

Open in new tab vs. back button

[modme2]

I thought everyone used 'right click -> open in new tab' more often than the back button?! Back is only good for getting out of a 200 page PDF! ;)

Re:Open in new tab vs. back button

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

I thought everyone used 'right click -> open in new tab' more often than the back button?

Nope, I use the middle mouse button to open new tabs :D

Agreed about the PDF. Whoever thought that opening those inside the browser was a good idea, was wrong.

Good thing we have those Authors...

[Mulletproof]

...That select such great stories! I mean, this dupe is infinitely better than, say:

2003-01-30 03:16:56 NASA Set to Unveil 'Jupiter Tour' Mission (articles,space) (rejected)

or...

2003-02-05 21:06:34 Optical Camouflage a Reality (articles,tech) (rejected)

"a duping we will go, a duping we will go, hi-ho the dairy-o, a duping we will go!"

Re:Good thing we have those Authors...

[Hast]

Seems like the optical camouflage is a dupe though. I remember reading about that a few months ago.

At least if it's about the japanese researcher who used image processing to "camoflage" an object by over-drawing it. So it didn't work IRL and while neat didn't seem to have all that many practical uses.

They use it a lot, so this guy wants change it?

[TheLink]

When people use a feature a lot, you better think things through very very thoroughly before making any changes. And then do LOTS of testing.

I dunno about you guys, but I'd figure it's better to add a different button rather than change the back button.

If it ain't broke don't fix it.

What should be fixed are those web pages which people click back almost immediately after visiting them or attempting to visit them... But let's not go there too deeply ;).

Re:They use it a lot, so this guy wants change it?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

When people use a feature a lot, you better think things through very very thoroughly before making any changes. And then do LOTS of testing...

...If it ain't broke don't fix it.

But it is broken. And they probably have done lots of user testing. Else why bother even making a subtle change if it isn't truely an improment?

Re:They use it a lot, so this guy wants change it?

[TheLink]

Like I said, why not just have a different button/widget for it?

That looks to be a cleaner solution than altering the back button which IMO isn't broken. Backward compatibility.

As for "why bother if it isn't truly an improvement?" go ask Marketing.

Re:They use it a lot, so this guy wants change it?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Like I said, why not just have a different button/widget for it?

If your software app has a bug in it, that needs fixing, do you create a new application and use the new onc when you don't want to encounter the bug? Or fix the current one?

This isn't supposed to be a new way of doing anything. It's fixing a flaw that shouldn't have been there in the first place.
You really need to re-read the artical poperly, because all your points make it seem as if they doing something totaly different.

They did mention a new way to navigate it aswell--Yes--But the main idea is to fix the way it works behind the GUI.

As for "why bother if it isn't truly an improvement?" go ask Marketing.

This was done in a university, and they're not selling browsers or even the idea for that matter. It's in the public domain, as the artical says.

Mirrors

[yerricde]

Just block the goatse-server in your ad-block/firewall/whatever.

Sure, I can block the IP addresses of hick.org, goatse.cx, and stileproject.com, but can I block all the sites that have that same JPEG image?

More info isn't always good

[jtheory]

The "tree" idea won't really catch on simply because most of the alternate branches tend to be mistakes, deadends, etc..

I think most of the time when you hit a link, back out, and go somewhere else, it's because you didn't find what you wanted. Obviously this isn't always true, but even if it's only true 90% of the time, all of those stumpy little branches on the tree are just extra, unwanted info that will confuse the user.

I'm curious to see if research would agree with me.... maybe the tree view would be useful if it only saved alternate branches more than 1 link long.

--
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
Albert Einstein

Re:More info isn't always good

[zsau]

I think instead of clearing the forward history when you click a link or whatever, it should remain. So: a->b->cd->e would have {a,d} in back and {b,c} in forward. It's just stupid clearing it all the time.

Re:More info isn't always good

[zsau]

Sorry, apparently plain old text is plain old text with extra markup! Plain old text redone for a new generation! Reposted.

I think instead of clearing the forward history when you click a link or whatever, it should remain. So: a->b->c<=b<=a->d->e would have {a,d} in back and {b,c} in forward. It's just stupid clearing it all the time.

Clueless

[Anonymous Coward]

I read Slashdot every day (or so). Not with religious ferver, though. And I knew it was a dupe the moment I saw it.

Strange how the people whose life *is* slashdot can't remember what stories are posted *the same day* much less in the last 12 months.

Adding comments to these dupes makes *us* the dupes.

This article totally misses the point

[Mirk]

It's all very well tweaking stuff like the length of the history list that the BACK button knows about, but it's not the real issue.

The real issue is SPEED.

In Netscape 3, going BACK was instantaneous. Of course it was: the browser already had the page in its cache, so it was a simple matter of re-rendering it.

Not any more: going BACK now entails re-fetching the page. Why? This is nonsense. If I want the page refreshed, I have a perfectly good REFRESH button to do that with. But when I click BACK, it's because I want to go back to what I was looking at before.

And with Mozilla (I don't think NS6 did this but I'm not sure), it's yet worse: if you go BACK to a page that you reached by POSTing a form, you have to click a button to re-submit the form contents. For badgers' sake! Just show me the page I was looking at already!

Slashdot used the BACK button!

[A nonymous Coward]

See, now you know why they want to eliminate the back button, no more dups on /.

Map button

[swb]

I don't mind the built-in back/forward setup, but what I would like to see is a map history that would display a 'map' of my N most recently visited pages.

It'd give me a way to jump back/ahead arbitrarily, and see what I've been doing visuaully. The history list of most browsers provides the basis for this information, but displays it in a manner that doensn't provide for good navigation.

It may not be the right answer

[P�l@Paris]

Anyway, their results are biased by the fact that their tests are conceived to favor their model of back button.

It is not guaranteed that any web surfer would want to navigate like this. (not even considering tabbed browsing) More precisely, two approaches are possible :

1. Regular, stack based, back button, which inmplies a "radiating" browsing model (sort of portal-based). This model strongly favors Apple's snap-back approach.
   That is : While browsing, I come across a "radiating point", or an info-portal like /. or the main page of a site, offering many links. I follow one of the link, which may or not be relevant. Only if it is not wish I to got back to the former portal a browse another link.
2. New, temporal based, back button, whiwh implied a more linear browsing, mainly because the complete history stack is erased by branching to another link.

I don't think the new proposed approach is very effective, nor is it intuitive.

Why don't they try to run their first test (ask if it possible to go back to a certain page using the back button) to see if their students understand the second model better that the first ?
What about testing the second model using a satisfaction survey after, say, one week of regular web browsing test ?

Obviously this article is quite interresting, and the fact that the back button has far more used that any other a good starting point for optimization, but it may not be the right answer...

Re:It may not be the right answer

[Radical Rad]

I don't think their proposed system of a "complete temporally ordered list of previously visited pages" would be much of an improvement but it might be worth it to add as an adjunct command rather than to replace "back".

All it means is that pages visited in this order: a, b, c1, b, c2, b, c3, b and then hitting their 'improved' back button would go to c3 instead of a. This might be useful sometimes when I have have visited many pages linked to off one page such as from a google search, but I also want a way to go back to the "a" page if I am done browsing the main page.

I propose using Alt-(arrow keys) for standard back behavior but Ctrl-(arrow keys) for the temporally ordered behavior. And maybe having a second set of buttons labelled "previous and next" for the new behavior.

Does anyone know if this is possible to make buttons with such behavior in XUL or does XUL affect display elements only?

Another Duplicate

[Anonymous Coward]

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/30/172720 6&mode=thread

Different writeup, same topic, subject and people.

CT Ok it's a dupe. But it's still neat!

[spazoid12]

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/02/04/152123 4&mode=thread&tid=106

The attitude of the editors here towards dupes is super. Dupes are neat!

Is being a /. editor a paid gig? Me thinks nobody's gotten a motivating paycheck in a few months...

Re:CT Ok it's a dupe. But it's still neat!

[Anonymous Coward]

who other than you and 3 others in the world actually care? :)

Re:CT Ok it's a dupe. But it's still neat!

[spazoid12]

you stupid piss. there are 4.

What's better than a smart back button?

[glenebob]

OOoohhh I know. A big red blinking sign that says "You have clicked a link to an off-site .PDF file. Are you on crack?"

People who deep-link to those evil things should be physically ./'d, and 90% of all .PDF creation should result in public flogging with a wet rope. Seriously, WTF is wrong with good old HTML?

Huh? They want me to use the mouse?

[Malc]

Summary
Gesture based shortcuts for issuing the common Back and Forward commands are already being used in commercial web browsers. The evaluation summarised here shows that these shortcuts are both efficient and popular. The current 'Alt+left-arrow' keyboard shortcut for Back is inefficient because it requires the user to move a hand between the keyboard and the mouse because the keys are normally too far apart to be pressed with one hand. Similarly, the 'backspace' keyboard shortcut requires right-handed users to either remove their hand from the mouse or to reach across the keyboard with their left hand. Gesture solutions, in contrast, are efficient, popular, and available to all users.

I abhor the idea of using the mouse more! It has been the only cause of elbow and wrist pain for me over the years as a software engineer. With both hands on the keyboard, alt+arrow is pretty easy, fast and fool-proof. Hmmm, maybe it comes more naturally to me as an Emacs user ;)

Oh, and tip for right-handed people that will vastly increase your efficiency: learn to use the mouse left-handed. If you must use the mouse, you will still have your other, dominant hand for typing or writing, or whatever.

Snap-back is like clicking back button many times

[MyNameIsFred]

Snapback takes you back to the last time you typed a URL (or selected one from your bookmarks). Say I type slashdot.org and hit return. Then I click-on a storylink, then a comment link. I am now multiple levels beyond my original typed-in URL. And a little orange arrow appears by the URL. Click on it and I'm returned to the original slashdot.org page.

This is useful, for example, on a google search. Do the google search, click on link, burrow a few links in. Now I want to go back to the google search results page. Click on the Snapback arrow, and viola I'm there.

Yes, there are other ways of doing this, e.g. tab browsing. But it is a neat and useful feature.

"RIGHT-CLICK"-"LEFT-CLICK"

[ZZZaphod]

App: Opera for PC

Technique:

BACK :

FORWARD :

Re:"RIGHT-CLICK"-"LEFT-CLICK"

[ZZZaphod]

APP: Opera for PC

TECHNIQUE:

BACK: <RIGHT-CLICK-N-HOLD> - <LEFT-CLICK>
FORWARD:<LEFT-CLICK-N-HOLD> - <RIGHT-CLICK>

KISS

[bheerssen]

The back button is simple and direct. Let's keep it that way. It works now and it works well.

I like Alric's suggestion. Smarter history tabs would handle the job better than extending the back button.

Combine this story

[obnoximoron]

with Intel going backwards in clock speed and you will soon be surfing punchcard pron on an ENIAC.

Back button and PDFs

[Ctrl-Z]

Nothing makes me hit the back button faster than the realization that I've just clicked on a link to a PDF. Come on! Can't you at least warn us?

Re:Back button and PDFs

[Sax Maniac]

Tell me about it. I had the misfortune of having Adobe Acrobat (the whole thing, not just the reader) actually installed on my computer once. Of course, when you clicked on a PDF in a web browser, it would take 20 seconds to load up the PDF editor itself instead of the viewer.

Naturally, all attempts to fix this in file associations failed. Bye bye Acrobat.

Stack-based and UI are the LEAST of the problems.

[dpbsmith]

The authors obsess over UI and user-mental-model issues, which to be sure are real enough. But those are not the biggest issues with the BACK button.

First, an extraordinary number of commercial web sites misbehave when the back button is used, probably due to handling of posted form data, passing along nontransient data as strings in URLS, etc. etc. Try a Google search on the exact phrase "Do not use your browser's back button" for examples of a few thousand sites that at least WARN you of problems. For every one that does, there are many that do not. The problems can be very serious, including double-shipped items, items ordered but never shipped, incorrect charges, etc.

Second, the back button seems to painfully and slowly reload pages over the Net. This may be a function of cache settings, but this is a function that should return to a locally cached state by default. Possible even a cached bitmap... (Yes, I know it would be difficult to get this just right without increasing the amount of function misbehavior).

Pretty Cool!

[DesiDudette]

Having been able to get to a page you visited days ago by using back...hmmmm...Sounds cool!!

Key?

[deaton]

'Net surfers use the back button more than any other key.

I never did have a "Back" key on my keyboard.

actually your title should be..

[DuckWing]

dupe, dupe, dupe, dupe of url ;-)

I started reading the article but...

[coinreturn]

...then I got bored and hit the BACK button.

What about an updated Forward button?

[ldopa1]

I would like to see a change in the Forward button, not the back button.

If I go to a page on a website (page A), visit a page from there (page B), and then go back to page A to visit yet another page from there (Page C), I would like to be able to go back to page A again, and then when I hit the forward button, be offered the chance to go to either page B or C. Kind of a tree arrangement.

Another alternative is to emulate Opera's Hotlist functionality - Have the hotlist dynamically build a folder-view type tree for each site I visit.

Aka, when I go to (for example) Realtor.com, I want to be able to go back to the search page and add more options just by going over to the hotlist and clicking on the Search "folder", three clicks back.

I think I might have to prototype this..

Re:What about an updated Forward button?

[blibbleblobble]

"I would like to see a change in the Forward button, not the back button."

Basically, store the history in a tree format (like others have suggested), but don't display the history. Back buttons work as normal.

And then, if you press forward, it checks to see if there are multiple 'forward paths' and if so, prompts you for which one you'd like.

Sounds like an idea to me. Volunteers for starting a mozilla project?

we use the "back" button the most?

[dmnic]

maybe Im just a weird case, but I cant even remember the last time I used the back button.
I always just open links, etc in a new TAB.

the ONLY button I regularly use is my refresh.

Add this to your UserContent.css...

[interactive_civilian]

Or whatever your browser uses for user-defined style-sheets:

/* Blacklist link (Mozilla) -- Blocks goatse.cx */
a[href*="goatse.cx/"]
{
text-decoration: line-through ! important;
color: brown ! important;
}

that will mark all goatse.cx links brown with a line through them. Never be fooled again.

My apologies as I forget who to credit for this, but is was posted in a recent Slashdot story about how to block ads and such using your UserContent.css or whatever equivalent. I hope this helps to make your browsing a less visually-dangerous experience as it has for mine.

Cheers. :)

Re:Add this to your UserContent.css...

[jesser]

My apologies as I forget who to credit for this

http://www.squarefree.com/userstyles/

Re:Add this to your UserContent.css...

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd be safer if you just blocked images at goatse.cx or redirect the whole thing to 127.0.0.1. (which is what I've done, but I'm not eager to test it)

If someone posts a link that goes through a redirect and escapes one or more letters, your style will not catch it. (and you know they will)

Re:Add this to your UserContent.css...

[Black_Logic]

Why the color brown? :)

Nice ideas, but what about...

[serutan]

I really like the idea of maintaining a Back trail that includes leaf nodes of browsing paths. But I was kind of hoping their list of Back Button Improvements would include dealing with sites that hijack your Back button to do a refresh or launch sixteen popups. Like maybe add them to a Ban-This-Damn-Site-From-My-Browser list.

Re:Nice ideas, but what about...

[blibbleblobble]

"Improvements would include dealing with sites that hijack your Back button to do a refresh or launch sixteen popups. Like maybe add them to a Ban-This-Damn-Site-From-My-Browser list"

Perhaps even would be a distributed ban-this-damn-site-from-everybodys-browser list. When you click a link, it could warn you "1380 slashdot users have rated this site annoying: do you want to continue?"

Why not just play with the software?

[beebz]

From the article:

Inspired by work on gesture-based marking menus (Callahan et al 1988), in 2001 we designed, implemented and evaluated a gesture-based mechanism for issuing the Back and Forward commands. Similar features were simultaneously released in the Opera 4 commercial web browser, and slightly later by the Mozilla Optimoz project 5. To our knowledge, neither of these commercial implementations has been formally evaluated.

Don't bother reading the paper unless you like to talk about UI instead of experience it and like to hear about the glory of Fitt's Law. Play with Opera or Optimoz.

A laptop?

[sean23007]

Microsoft even gave a laptop computer and other support to the cause, but there's been no contact between the academics and the company since.

Really...? Well, Microsoft, I don't particularly like the way the back button works either. Can I have a laptop if it means I never have to talk to you again?

Good to see they're up to date.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mid-90's research. Not much about the internet has changed since 1995 now has it?

Bind your middle mouse button

[xagon7]

To the backspace key. Well.. only if ya ain't got one of them new fangled ones. Works great.

Opera is already there

[watzinaneihm]

They say....
back buttons shouldnt be stack based, instead tree based.
I am willing to settle for a list....each instance of a page being a member of list ie a->b->cb->e would have [a,b,c,b,e] in "memory" instead of current [a]

Use mouse gestures, saves time switching between kbd and mouse
I kind of tend to use keyboard exclusively.....But mouse gestures are nice for the average guy
Nice to see that Opera has a mouse gestures option, and that its "history" includes not just the urls you typed in, but all the pages you visited....

Coming Soon! Better FORWARD Button!

[Maul]

I have done extensive research and have figured out a way to build a better forward button as well.

Currently the forward button only works after you've hit the back button. This is highly inconvenient, because the forward button is useless when you fire up your browser.

However, my new improved forward button will allow web users to actually click ahead into the future so that they don't have to type the URL of the site they are about to visit. It does this with my patented Mind Matrix Technology (TM) that uses a complex mathematical formula to determine what the user wants to see next.

why not tabs? they are not a precious resource!

[chocolatetrumpet]

>But I'm not going to put every page of a 10 page article in a new tab. And if I'm in a forum, I'm not going to open everything in a new tab either.

Ahhh but why not? You are not billed per tab. The only real estate here is screen real estate, and I do think with most of us using 1280x1024 type resolutions, there is plenty of screen real estate for tabs. So, use them! Open 40 new links in new tabs. Move back and forth easily between discussion group posts. It's excellent - take advantage!

Back Button - Iharvest

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a great app called Iharvest which integrated with IE and allowed you to easily store and arrange web-pages as you surfed in a drag and drop format. The saved pages could be stored and arranged in folders via a side bar, and searched using keywords, etc. (there were many other great features, and I used it extensively for research) It was great, though a resource hog. Unfortunately the company died and I've shifted to Mozilla. Has anyone created something like this for Netscape/Mozilla, or is working on it?

Entropy?

[WIAKywbfatw]

Entropy? Nah, it's fashion.

Last year's story was sooo 2002.

Re:Snap-back is like clicking back button many tim

[On Lawn]

I'm not still sure how this works. If I typed "www.google.com", and then hit snap back does it go to the last page I was at in that domain or does it go back to the google home page. I doubt you are hand typing your queries into the URL, unless your one of those "real" programmers of course.

---------------
OnRoad: Why do I like GPL? Its more wholesome, open and collaborative then say GTA3.

Key presses, buttons and clicks, oh my..

[Colven]

"Net surfers use the back button more than any other key"

When did they turn the "back button" into a key? Is there an "any" key now, too?

Anyhoo... I use Alt + left/right directional keys to "scroll" through IE's history, and I tab through links on the page... barbaric, I know. I don't like reaching for the mouse any more than I have too... especially now that my stylus is dead and I've ripped the top off of my mouse so that I have to push the little switches inside... :( .

I hate mieces to pieces.

W key

[Anonymous Coward]

You keep your right hand on the mouse and your left hand near command-w
That's the first time I've heard it called *that*

The ultimate back button...

[alexburke]

...is the throw-switch on the DeLorean's flux-capacitor.

Re:Snap-back is like clicking back button many tim

[MyNameIsFred]

As with many browsers, Safari has a URL box and a Google search box. Each has a Snapback icon. So for a Google search, you enter your key words, and hit return. Once you start clicking on links in the google search results, the Google Snapback icon becomes active in the Google search box. Click the snapback icon for the google search and you're returned to the Google search results.

FYI, I have two Snapback icons visible on Safari at this very moment. One for my last Google search, and one for the last bookmark I selected. BTW, you can not have more than these two Snapback icons.

Apple Movie Demoing SnapBack

[MyNameIsFred]

For those wanting to see SnapBack, Apple has a QuickTime movie demonstrating is, Demo Movie

I hope....

[jorr]

I can find my back to this tomorrow :)

Re:I hope....

[jorr]

Aargh: I meant to say "my way" and when I first tried to reply I got: "Slashdot requires you to wait 20 seconds between hitting 'reply' and submitting a comment. It's been 17 seconds since you hit 'reply'! Chances are, you're behind a firewall or proxy, or clicked the Back button to accidentally reuse a form. Please try again. If the problem persists, and all other options have been tried, contact the site administrator."

mouse gestures

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone else use mouse gestures? I find them extremely useful, especially for going back and forward across webpages. Just hold left button and move to the left to go back and to the right to go forward. Do a z to close the tab, slide up to open a new tab, or up over a lin kto open the link in a new tab, to view source, draw and s. Just my $0.02

Back Again

[Anonymous Coward]

How about the article coming back. I read Slashdot once every week or so, sometimes less, and I'm catching repeats. The signal to noise of Slashdot gets worse every time I look.

And my comment probably isn't helping.

Middle click? No problem.

[akozakie]

Don't kill, just use it. It exists since... well, I don't know, I've been using it forever. It's probably turned off by default, God knows why.
In opera6.ini, opera.ini, or whatever your version names it, section [User Prefs]:

Center Mousebutton Action=2

Voila. I remember I had to dig the webpage to learn that. BTW, read that "Undocumented features" section somewhere at www.opera.com, some nice things can be found.

Ah, I use it under Linux, I'm not sure about Windows. I think it used to work, but I'm really not sure.

Oh, one more thing:

Why, why, oh why make this off by default, only configurable by editing the .ini, and at the same time make the gestures for a new window and for closing a window so !@#$!@#$% similar?!? That's the one thing I hate about gestures, if the mouse drifts a bit too far right while you gesture down, oops, your top window is closed, you don't remember the URL, or even how you got there and there's no history to help you. WHY!?!?! Design, people!

Still, Opera is the best for me. Good luck with Phoenix, people, I'm waiting for v.7.0/Linux.

Forward button thru linked list of pages

[bzipitidoo]

Someone said it! It's not the Back button, it's the Forward button.

How about a "linked list" of visited pages? a->b->c, Back to b, then to d leaves a->b->d in Back's list and the Forward button disabled. Instead, insert d in the linked list a->b->c, getting a->b->d->c. You'd be on page d, and Forward will take you to c.

No messy trees.

huh huh beavis his name is cockburn

[Anonymous Coward]

haha, is that like when your cock burns, or is it like heartburn, you get it after...

post anonymously

Backspace really

[hackrobat]

Net surfers use the back button more than any other key.

You mean the backspace key, don't you? Well I think all f^Hcomputr^Her ^Husers use the back ^Hspace key more than any other key/^H.

Re:Coming Soon! Better FORWARD Button!

[blibbleblobble]

"It does this with my patented Mind Matrix Technology (TM) that uses a complex mathematical formula to determine what the user wants to see next."

I think this is planned for the Windows Palladium MSN-Internet Explorer TM browser. You'll just open the browser and it'll show you the sites it thinks you should visit.

If you can't wait till then, and want to try the beta test, download RealPlayer, and check the "I want to install the download manager" option.

People still use the back button?

[Trogre]

"Net surfers use the back button more than any other key."

Not I. Since the advent of tabs in most real browsers, most links are followed by opening in a new tab. Only for highly serial pages would one open a subsequent page in the same tab.
I use the back button for, maybe, 2% of sites I visit.

Re:Coming Soon! Better FORWARD Button!

[kronstadt]

They're thinking on adding the following to IE:

forward() {
if (nextSite == NULL)
go(msn.com)
else
go(nextSite)
}

Functioning "Back" button in new window/tab

[singularity]

I am a big fan of "Open Link in Background Window/Tab" offered by a lot of smaller web browsers.

I currently use K-Meleon while on the PC, and iCab on the Mac.

One thing I wish the "Back" button could do is remember the page that sent me to the page in quesiton, even if it was in another window or tab.

Try this: Right click on a link. Select "Open in new window" (or tab). In that new window 9or tab), try using the Back button.

The browser *should* be able to remember where you were coming from. iCab used to do this (going on my memory here), but no longer does.

I Hardly Use The Back Button

[BryanL]

I must have a short attention span because if I normally click on a link, by the time I read the new page I forgot what I was doing on the internet to begin with. That would be fine if I was just surfing, but most of the time I have a specific purpose. I usually right-click and open a new window.

A new back button may be fine, but I like my method (except that java scripts are becoming more prevelant and they don't let you right-click to open a new window.) Besides, having multiple windows open allows me to compare information from various sources.

My encounter with the gods of irony

[TheABomb]

While reading /. with lynx, I tried to navigate to the linked pdf document. Not paying attention, I tried to open rather than save the file, got a binary file display, and had to use the back key.

Well, I thought it was funny, anyhow.

Re:Coming Soon! Better FORWARD Button!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah, just set your home page to that porn site. It'll save you a lot of time and effort.

Annoying things about back

[ThePyro]

The most annoying things about the back button:

1) I just opened a page in a new tab (tabbed browsing rules). I closed the original tab. Crap! I want to get back there! Yet the back button in the new tab has no idea what the previous page was... Is this still a problem in other browsers that support tabbed browsing? (I'm using Mozilla)

2) The redirect problem (mentioned somewhere above). A page redirects me so fast that if I go back then I simply get redirected to where I just was. There's not enough time to go back twice.

3) Ambiguous behavior of back links. Let's say I'm viewing page 5, and I just came from page 6. There's a back link at the bottom. Is this going to tell my browser to go "back" to page 6, or is it going to take me to the page 4 (the page that comes before 5) ? I guess this is more an issue of standardizing the behavior of links named "back"... but it's still obnoxious.

4) More of a "forward" problem, but still a problem... I visit a site. I follow three or four links, decide I don't like them, and go back to where I started. I then follow a different link. Crap! The first set of link WAS where I wanted to go after all! Unfortunately there's no way to get back there without digging through the history - your "forward" history gets overwritten once you go back and then follow a different link. In some cases you might remember which links you clicked on to get there... but not always.

The history tree mentioned above might be decent solution to that problem... or maybe not.

Re:Annoying things about back

[belg4mit]

One word: stack

Re:Coming Soon! Better FORWARD Button!

[tekunokurato]

What, does it always load pr0n? Remarkable!

Just like the TiVo

[hobo2k]

"No honey I was just counter-programming the browser. The foward button thinks I'm gay"

Previous item and Next Chapter item

[Anonymous Coward]

Something I would love to see is a previous item (read chapter/image/page) and next item button. A lot of worthwhile sites consist of pages that should be read one after the other. The result is putting in a "Next page" link top and bottom. Would it not be great if we could build that into the HTML and a shortcut is available for this?

#ifdef SARCASM_ON
We might have to make a small addition to the HTML, but hey, standards are there to be changed. The fact that websites would jump on it to send you to sites you did not plan to go is really not that big a problem, they already pop up windows all over the place.
#endif

Now I will just sit back and dream about a fast economic recovery or something else that is more likely to happen.

I'd prefer a FORWARD button == serious

[Zilch]

Why can't there be a button or hotkey that links to an HTML tag that describes where the next logical page is if you are reading a website in a liner fashion? For example, when reading an article on the web, I don't want to have to search for the link to the next page, that should be a function of the browser (or a keyboard hotkey). Otherwise you have to search the page for the link, which I've noticed is never in the same place on different sites.

Zilch

Back button on mouse

[GCP]

I just want the back and forward buttons on my Intellimouse Explorer to work in Mozilla on Linux. They are extremely convenient in IE on Windows.

Back Button is old school

[Vandil X]

Mouseover hyperlink. Right-Click > Open in New Window.

There really isn't a need for a Back Button anymore, unless you hate having more than one browser/browser tab open.

What the browser needs

[Anonymous Coward]

the W3C should add a next and Previous tag into the html standard then browsers could make use of them when navigateing through relitivly flat page structures like multipage articals. a simple key combination could be used to navigate (Ctrl + forward and Ctrl + Back are available) it would save clicks and make skimming articals for relivent information easyer.

Pr0n downloading...(Re:Very IE biased, isn't it?)

[keller]

Dunno if this is also available in Moz' but using the extension available here you can open the pr0n pics in seperate tabs, and then save all of them using ctrl-shift-s to save all tabs at once!

Very nice indeed...

.K

Solution in Mozilla bug 187187

[bzipitidoo]

Makes the Forward button a lot more useful. Vote for that enhancement! bug 187187

Last Post!

[alpg]

The idea that an arbitrary naive human should be able to properly use a given
tool without training or understanding is even more wrong for computing than
it is for other tools (e.g. automobiles, airplanes, guns, power saws).
-- Doug Gwyn

- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...