This is an inaccurate title.<p>Firefox is not "blocking" the backspace key from working as Back. They're just swapping the default, which is already the default in Linux.<p>From the article itself:<p>>Set the browser.backspace_action to 0 in the about:config settings panel to re-enable support for the Backspace key as a Back button.
The first thing I turn off. It often interacts badly with many single-page we apps where a field loses focus when you remove its contents. Hit the backspace key one too many times, and you navigate back. Not all pages behave this way, but enough do that it's infuriating.
Surprisingly uplifting news. I can't believe in 2021 this was still default behavior. I immediately had flashbacks to all the times I accidentally lost progress in something due to hitting the backspace button, then went through the process of changing the behavior myself.
I switched to side mouse buttons a few years back, probably around the time Chrome made this change. It's been great: my hand is on the mouse much of the time. On top of that, almost all of the time I click back, I want to either scroll or move the mouse soon after.<p>I can't believe I used to move my hand to an out-of-the-way spot on the keyboard to go back a page.
Ugh. I use this behavior for my air mouse so I can assign "Go Back" to one of the buttons.<p>Well reading to the end fortunately Firefox will have a configuration to restore this behavior.<p>Nevermind.
Happy that this remains configurable.<p>It's not hard to check whether you have the input area focused before hitting it, so the accidental mis-presses I've experienced are pretty minimal.