Why does backspace go to previous page

Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Why does backspace go back a page? This behavior is so frustrating! Ask Question. Asked 7 years, 8 months ago. Active 1 year, 6 months ago. Viewed 46k times. Chrome developers have decided to remove this, see this story from Ars Technica: Google hovers over delete button for backspace nav shortcut in Chrome Google: Only 0.

This means that up to 1 in 8 backspace navigations could be losing user data. How did this come about? Is the standard default behavior too strongly established to reverse course?

Can we change it, and what would be the plan to do so? Canonical paths to blocking this I'll be logging the canonical ways to turn this off for browsers here, and I do not want to see software add-ons here: Firefox: in about:config change browser.

Improve this question. Aaron Hall. Aaron Hall Aaron Hall 3, 4 4 gold badges 15 15 silver badges 23 23 bronze badges. This blog entry by Jeff atwood would also apply: blog.

That bug report is very interesting! It is almost a usability test report in itself! On linux Mozilla disabled the backspace key mapping since — ilanco. SNag - It's far too easy to lose focus on the text field for whatever reason. I'm posting this almost a year and a half after your comment after encountering the same problem, and reading through the bug report page of many other users encountering the same problem. I don't think the overloading is even close to justified.

Show 20 more comments. Active Oldest Votes. Why did the page change? Now I have to fill in that form all over again. Improve this answer. Community Bot 1. I would love to see how other people handle this in javascript without jQuery too. And I have used this code for years with no complaint, but if there is a better way I am all ears : — pathfinder. StackOverflow would be the place to provide this type of answer.

In fact, artificially capturing the backspace key and altering its behavior is poor UX. Here's how to disable the Backspace key's back button function in Chrome and Firefox We haven't yet found a way to do this in IE or Safari.

Check "Allow in incognito" to make sure BackStop works, even when you are using an Incognito window. In our tests, we found that BackStop was effective in disabling the Backspace as back button in a number of applications, but not in the Chrome settings menu itself.

Some web store commenters have reported that it did not work for them on some sites, but we did not experience any issues. Mozilla deserves kudos for offering a backspace disabling option in the browser itself. No third-party apps or plug-ins needed. Raise your hand if you prefer to use 2 keys to perform a task instead of the ease of simply using 1. Nobody, of course. I wish Mozilla would hire real UX experts instead of the dingbats they must currently employ.

I support this change to the default behaviour. Since this change only affects pages with text input fields, we have to assume that you only lose data because you simply forget to click into text fields in the first place. Except none of the settings shown under about:preferences privacy control the scheduled telemetry task, they merely control in-browser telemetry. The referral link served as a non-unique Brave identifier on select partner websites, so that Brave Software could get paid per click.

Unfortunately for you, puk-puk-puk, Firefox does the very same thing with Google search URLs, adding their own referral I mean, so that Google can count searches coming from Firefox users and then pay Mozilla the associated search engine royalties.

You never see me criticizing Brave, Firefox, or any other browser for referrals, because those are a legitimate way of funding your operation without having to infringe user privacy or user security.

Saying that this is not a legitimate way of funding is baseless, considering it OK which it is in Firefox but not in Brave, is hypocrisy. Trust me with that one. The scheduled telemetry task, or incidents like the Cliqz or Mr. Robot disasters, were actual problems. What you come up with here is pure nonsense.

OK, I was wrong there it happens. Seems like the scheduled telemetry task respects a general telemetry opt-out. Vivaldi is currently the best, most feature-rich browser on the market. On top of that Firefox on android comes with multiple trackers by default and a separate telemetry app on desktop.

Vivaldi has none of that BS. Lame news. They have been chipping away at customization over the last 10 years to bring it closer to Chrome. Not in any of our eight FF installations. What are we doing wrong? Feeling so left out :. First spyware and agendas, now intelligence service — You people have serious problems …. I never use the Backspace-key to navigate; in fact I never use it at all. To be in conformity with other browsers? Change for valid reasons, not for the sake of belonging to a majority, right?!

Pluralism, diversity contribute to progress! I do think a shortcut is useful and one should be kept, but backspace is a key that can often be used when trying to manipulate fields and forms, so it can easily be invoked accidentally. Thank goodness. I have never used backspace to navigate history.

I thought that feature was something accidental that they never bothered to fix. Very annoying. A well-balanced, mature solution for respectable gentlemen who look confidently into the future and do not need to constantly jump back and forth through history. Hopefully we will still be able to modify it through about:config. We may have a few of them using Backspace accidentally, but the majority use it to go back in history.

This shortcut has always been there from the beginning of the web. Mozilla fails to note that over half It always has; something as annoying as paging back while correcting a form entry would have definitely been noticed. The about:config setting is at 0, its default, no bold text. If the cursor is focused in a text entry field, the Backspace key backspaces.

I use Fx It behaves in the same manner in current Basilisk. So, when did Mozilla change it in Fx after Fx And now they are going to change it back? I am a mouse person. Plus, I have never mistaken the back space key for F12 and I never accidentally hit the backspace key. F12 just opens the web console so what would be so awful if you did accidentally hit it? So even when NONE of the text entry fields on a page are focused the backspace key deletes text from some randomly selected text field instead of paging back?

What utter illogical nonsense. But at least in Brave the browser kind of temporarily caches what you have typed into input fields. So if I go back in history with e. Aegis Nothing wrong with Conservatives being deplatformed. They are a relict of the past, the future belongs to the progressives and general left leaning people!

But i still have a problem with the excluding stance of Mozilla and a lot of other big tech companies… They should more add something like. Which is truly inclusive. But being against Conservatives… the assault recently in America is clearly showing the need for doing that. This seems like the right thing to do. This was for me probably the most important reason to never change from firefox to any other browser, because of the lack of the shortcut keys. My company makes me. From this article I learned that you can restore the previous action ; And now I also know that additionally the left alt and arrows have the same use, although it is less convenient because it involves 2 buttons.

But as a transition to the next page, when I go back too far, this knowledge will come in handy. Setting the flag to 1 also gives interesting effects. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Please click on the following link to open the newsletter signup page: Ghacks Newsletter Sign up.

Ghacks is a technology news blog that was founded in by Martin Brinkmann. It has since then become one of the most popular tech news sites on the Internet with five authors and regular contributions from freelance writers. Search for:. Firefox 86 will block the Backspace-key to go back action by default.

Mozilla plans to disable the Backspace-key "go back" in history action in the Firefox web browser by default in Firefox Find out why, and how to restore it. Martin Brinkmann. Related content Create custom Firefox installations with Firefox Profilemaker.

Firefox Firefox won't prompt anymore when you are closing multiple tabs, but there is an option to enable it. Mozilla is testing a Firefox version on the Microsoft Store, but it's not available for users yet. Previous Post: « Firefox Comments pd said on January 8, at am. ULBoom said on January 9, at am. SpywareFan said on January 8, at am.