The 'Back' Button the Most Clicked Firefox Icon

darthcamaro writes "How many times did you click the 'Back' button in your browser last week? According to a new study from Mozilla, it's likely that you clicked 'Back' a whole lot. 'Across Windows, Mac and Linux 93.1 percent of users clicked the button at least once over the course of a five-day period. In total the study reported that users clicked on the back button 66 times over the course of five days. The next most used button is the 'Reload' button with 73.2 percent usage and 22 clicks on average per user over five days. Other areas of the main window that were heavily used include the Search Bar where users input search queries. The study found that 67.9 percent of users used the Search Bar for an average of nearly 16 clicks per user over the course of five days.'"

Comments

Or...

[deesine]

it's the most used gesture: Right button down, drag left.

Re:O:

[SimonTheSoundMan]

Or three finger swipe on a Mac.

I very seldom "go back"...

[Anonymous Coward]

I pretty much consistently use ctrl-click to open links, then just ctrl-w when I'm done with them...

Self-contradictory?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The heatmap will be updated over the course of the Firefox 4 beta program. Hopefully, this visualization will help us understand how the various UI changes affect user behavior, and ensure that these design decisions are in fact improving the product for our (beloved) end-users."

"Now that we know how users are using FF3, we can figure out how to pessimize FF4's UI. It'll look like Office's Ribbon, or Chrome, or Opera, but whatever it is, it won't look or feel anything like FF3. But it'll look good on our resumes when we can say we're up on all the hot new UI trends, even though everyone's flaming us for them. And we'll make sure to use little icons for everything instead of words, because then we don't have as much stuff to translate when it comes time to localize the product."

Sorry if I sound like a curmudgeon, but UI these days seems more about mental masturbation and keeping up with the Joneses than actually taking a good product and making it better. The first couple of months of any major Firefox upgrade has consisted of nothing more than figuring out what they changed, and which about:config settings I need to tweak in order to change it back to something I found usable.

Re:Self-contradictory?

[Hatta]

Yes. I know better than anyone else what I find useable. A good UI should have sane defaults and be customizable to what I need. Once I configure it properly, it should not change. UI designers should focus on giving us as many options as possible, and setting them to sane defaults.

In any case, horribly broken defaults that can be customized to something I like is far, far better than moderately acceptable defaults that cannot be customized at all.

Re:Why it was made big

[Shin-LaC]

I never use the back button. I hate having to wait for pages to load/render/whatever, so I got in the habit long ago of opening most links in new tabs so they load while I'm reading something else.

Re:Or... or... or... or...

[Anonymous Coward]

Most mouses have a back button built in. That's what I tend to use more than anything.

and in other news

[rossdee]

the F2 key is the most used key in Solitaire

Re:Why it was made big

[Threni]

I hate Back taking ages cos it's reloading the screen. It's in memory - just show what you showed last time. I don't care that it might have changed. No, I don't want you to resend the message - just show me the bloody page you showed me just seconds ago before I accidentally clicked/changed my mind.

Or perhaps bad site design affecting usage?

[Anonymous Coward]

It could be the most clicked icon because some asshole put javascript in a website that hijacks the back button. As in "Gawddammitwhycan'tIgetbackwhereIwasbefore!!!" while clicking it 500 times. At least that's what happens until they figure out the what the little arrow for the history dropdown is for and then managing to go back by using the list.

When most people hit back, they want to go back, not have the browser refresh send them to the same page they just left. There should be an (obvious) option to disable that kind of (malicious) script somewhere without needing an extension.

Re:Because it's in the upper-left?

[Hatta]

I think you have the causation backwards. They put the most useful button in the upper left because that's where it's easier to find it.

Re:Why it was made big

[mysidia]

Yeah, but oftentimes with the flash quackery, the back button doesn't work anyways.

Breaking the back button is one of the most serious design mistakes a webmaster can make. Since, as we can see from just these observations about FF, the back button is one of the most frequently used functions by a large majority of surfers.

Re:Mouse "Thumb" button?

[mysidia]

3 button optical mice where the center button is a scroll wheel are still very common.

Actually, I rarely see anyone with a mouse that has more than 3 buttons. I don't think most computer users have what you are referring to. /p

Re:Because it's in the upper-left?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's because thats where people expect to see your "home page"
When your deep inside the bowels of a website and want to return to the home page - guess where you typically click - yep, the logo at the location of the defacto standard home page location

You are sacrificing your own customers for money - it's up to you if it's worth it or not.

Re:Why it was made big

[Killjoy_NL]

I just press backspace, doesn't that do the same??