Mozilla developers plan to remove support for using the Backspace key as a Back button inside Firefox.The change is currently active in the Firefox Nightly version and is expected to go live in Firefox 86, scheduled to be released next month, in late February 2021.ZDNet RecommendsThe best free video streaming servicesThe best free video streaming servicesIs money tight? Have you binge-watched everything on Netflix that you ever wanted to see? Here are ways to find new-to-you, great movies plus TV shows for free.Read MoreThe removal of the Backspace key as a navigational element didn’t come out of the blue. It was first proposed back in July 2014, in a bug report opened on Mozilla’s bug tracker.At the time, Mozilla engineers argued that many users who press the Backspace key don’t always mean to navigate to the previous page (the equivalent of pressing the Back button).”Pressing backspace does different things depending on where the cursor is. If it’s in a text input field, it deletes the character to the left. If it’s not in a text input field, it’s the same as hitting the back button,” said Blair McBride, a senior software engineer for Mozilla at the time.”Whether to keep this behaviour has been argued For A Very Long Time,” McBride said. “It’s confusing for many people, but we’ve assumed it would break muscle memory for many people.”Back in 2014, McBride asked other Mozilla engineers to gather data and see exactly how many people press this key before taking a decision.Subsequent data showed that the Backspace key is, by far, the most pressed keyboard shortcut inside the Firefox user interface, with 40 million monthly active users pressing the key and triggering a “Back” navigation.To put it in perspective, this was well above the 16 million Firefox users pressing the CTRL+F shortcut to search content inside a page and 15 million Firefox users who pressed the page reload shortcuts (F5 and CTRL+R).
Source: Firefox to block Backspace key from working as “Back” button | ZDNet
Robin Edgar
Organisational Structures | Technology and Science | Military, IT and Lifestyle consultancy | Social, Broadcast & Cross Media | Flying aircraft