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by mcrmonkey 3680 days ago
ffs this is stupid. backspace has always been "back" in browsers and it really vexes me when some versions of firefox on some linux distro's do this. two hands have to be used to action this because the right alt key is either not mapped ( on some os'es ) or is alt-gr. backspace works well when moving quickly too - one finger from home row and bam.

Rather then this be the fix they should probably look at the bug thats causing the user to go back when the form element is focused.

Whats next ? take away space bar for moving through the page ?

A about:config thing needs to be present for this to allow the user to switch between what they want. Sure extentions are possible to fix this too but i dont really want a 3rd party extention to re-enable whats a tried and tested keyboard shortcut. Additionally what happens if that dev's account gets hacked and the extention modded for malace ? Or if the dev pulls the thing in a way similar to the node.js module issue a month or so ago.

This part is worrying though:

We have UseCounters showing that 0.04% of page views navigate back via the backspace button and 0.005% of page views are after a form interaction.

Where is that data being gathered from and how?

Additionally what is classed as a form interaction ?