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The 'Back' Button the Most Clicked Firefox Icon

Posted by timothy on from the whatchu-clickin'-about-willis? dept.

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.'"

4 of 267 comments (clear)

  1. Or... by deesine · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

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    damaged by dogma
  2. Re:Why it was made big by Threni · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Re:Self-contradictory? by Hatta · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
  4. Re:Why it was made big by mysidia · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.