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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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: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: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: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.