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Google Chrome To Disallow Backspace As a 'Back' Button (independent.co.uk)
An anonymous reader writes: Google Chrome is going to stop people from accidentally deleting everything they've been doing. A future version of the app will stop the backspace button from also functioning as a "back" button. The change has already been rolled out in some experimental versions of the app, and has upset some users. Developers have said that the feature is only being partly enabled for now, in case there is "sufficient outcry" and it needs to be rolled back. People regularly press the button thinking that they're deleting a word from a form, developers said, but then find that they weren't actually typing into that form and so accidentally go back, losing everything they've done.
This one actually seems like a good design decision.
On pc the backspace and delete buttons both exist and they work exactly as they should. Darned if I care what apple does.
On chrome I also see back, forward and refresh/stop just fine.
However the problem with backspace going back is that if you are typing in a textarea and you hit backspace it deletes your text (which is what you want). However if you tab to another control that is not text editable and you hit backspace you have now gone back a page and lost what you where entering. It violates all kinds of UI principles.
Backspace to go back is just a bad UI and fixing it should definitely be done. There is no dumbing down involved.
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Actually, the interface designer said "Screw it. Just put them all in a huge list, but make sure it's pretty hidden."
see chrome:flags
There used to be a set of golden rule guides on good GUI design. Some of the rules were:
1. Make every window consistent. /tmp
2. Ensure that every window has a [CANCEL], exit without changing anything button
3. Ensure that "dangerous" options are separated well away from "harmless" options.
4. Ensure that anything that could be undone was guarded with a "confirm" and with a timeout
5. Ensure that the user was queried when they tried to leave without saving work.
6. Ensure that backup copies were saved somewhere permanent and not somewhere temporary like
7. Use internationally recognised symbols wherever possible
If there were an option for every setting on which users has varying opinions, the preferences page would be so cluttered that you'd get frustrated by the overly complex interface and complain even more loudly about that.
Uh, what?
How hard is it to have a single tab/page for "keyboard shortcuts/hotkeys"?
Plenty of UI's do exactly that.
It was dumb to map backspace to back anyway. With Internet and browsers dominating existence, keyboards should be redesigned with common browser clickies built in and separate from editing keys.
Objections? Consider your useless neck broken and your body left for the wolves.
And thus the wheel of pain spins full circle. Mainframe terminals have always worked this way. The terminal is sent a non-web form, the user enters some data in fields with Tab and Return serving only and always to move the cursor around. Once you're done, there was a separate "Xmit" key to post the form.
Form submission was always explicit, and entirely compatible with high-speed touch-typists.
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Well, no, that's not why that's there. The reason 'flags' exists is because chrome doesn't branch. Any features that are in development go right in the main branch, so there's no costly merging. It has basically nothing to do with UI concerns; it's a result of the dev process.
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There is an option for this in Firefox, although it is hidden in about:config
browser.backspace_action :
0 : go back one page (the default on Windows)
1 : scroll up (the default on linux before 2006-12-07)
2 : do nothing (the default on linux after 2006-12-07)
I like by backspace binding so on linux I change this. This should be the same for Chrome.
I don't remember losing form data because of this. The biggest cause of losing data is failed submissions (connection problem, website error, session expired, ...). In case it happens I have Lazarus which saved the day a couple of times. Instead of changing keybindings people are used to, form backup is what Chrome should do, so that you don't lose your data no matter what.