It's just terrible UI design on so many levels.<p>* It uses a text-input key in a modal way, when no other unmodified text keys are used modally in a web browser.<p>* Shifting between modes can happen inexplicitly and unintentionally.<p>* It's potentially destructive.<p>Add this all up and you have a recipe for users unintentionally and unexpectedly losing data. That's bad enough on its own.<p>The fact that the justification for it appears to be "because somebody made a poor UI decision 20 years ago and people don't like change" is inexcusable.
This was particularly infuriating back when browsers would commonly lose input state when going back then forward. For years, long after that was resolved, I still wrote anything longer than a single sentence in notepad.<p>Even if this is kept for inertial reasons (I do make use of it on a trackpad myself), I think as soon as you interact with any kind of text input it should be disabled for the page.
On Firefox:<p><pre><code> Go to about:config
Search for browser.backspace_action
Set it to 2
</code></pre>
All fixed. It is disabled by default in Linux, but someone surely made a mistake and forgot to turn it off by default in Windows in some misunderstood concept of 'compatibility'.
The whole premise is focusing on a symptom rather than the real issue. I happen to love backspace, because having to press a chord, half of which is requires my hand to move the arrow keys, is a major cache-miss for an action as common as navigating back.<p>But none of that even matters. The real question is:<p>Why do browsers not have an interface for configuring keyboard shortcuts yet?<p>And while they're at it, add an interface to customize whether or not JavaScript in web pages can override certain shortcuts. Not being able to rebind C-w, C-t, C-S-t, space, backspace, etc. has been a huge frustration for ages. One of the reasons I use Firefox is that it has a robust enough extension mechanism to support add-ons like KeySnail, but the fact the key rebinding isn't core functionality is just embarrassing.
I like this feature actually, because I'm used to it. It's simpler and quicker than using Alt + ←. I'm kinda pissed when this behavior is overridden (ie. Google Search).
To be honest, this:<p>"On some pages (but not all) when I want to erase the last few characters I just typed, I tap Backspace several times. Tap tap tap. And then, lo-and-behold, my browser is leaving the page I was on and going back in the tab history."<p>never happened to me, and I'm really wondering how the asker manages to lose the focus on a text field while he types.
For disabled users backspace to go back is tremendously useful. On keyboards with Alt Gr, pressing Alt + Left Arrow requires pressing down keys with both the left and right hand simultaneously. It's not possible if one of your arms is paralyzed. Targetting the back button (which btw, is getting smaller and smaller i newer browsers) with the mouse to click can also be a very time consuming task if you are suffering from involuntary shakes.<p>Some people actually surf using tab to focus links, then click with return and goes back with backspace. For them removing the backspace as back function is a big step backwards (haha) in usability. Yes, one could argue that they should just install vimperator and some other addons to make the browser usable with their particular disability. But most handicapped users are just as clueless as normal ones and have no idea how to customize their software.
On the plus side, it's a large key that does not require simultaneous key presses: holding down multiple keys at the same time is not user friendly, especially for noobs.<p>The backspace frequently has a backwards arrow printed on it, so symbolically it feels right.<p>Personally I find web pages that break common shortcuts, and navigation paradigms more irritating. Google+ changes the behaviour of CTRL+PGUP/PGDOWN, some sites hijack the spacebar (normally I use for paging), some sites hijack CTRL+CLICK that I use to open links in new tabs.<p>I never hear people bemoaning the use of the Home key to go to the home page, and its different behaviour in text input areas. But I can appreciate some people don't like it how the controls appear to change, depending on what you are doing, it's far from obvious for some people.<p>I find The issue with text controls in browsers, is one of focus, thinking that you are in text area, when you aren't etc. The browsers could really help here, by making it really obvious which form element has the focus. It's doubly annoying when you are have focus on a flash component, and none of your keyboard shortcuts feel like they work. I'm a keyboard fan, but really without having some exotic setup, you are reliant upon the mouse with the mainstream OSs because of irritations like these. Which is really irritating for me when I'm trying to do simple things with just the keyboard sitting on the sofa with a computer connected to the TV.
To avoid loss of form input, there are several auto-save-to-localstorage solutions like <a href="http://garlicjs.org/" rel="nofollow">http://garlicjs.org/</a>. Just add data-persist="garlic" to the form tag and everything is saved until successfully submitted.
I get really frustrated with the comments that say "but backspace doesn't do that when you're in a text control". To me thats completely missing the point. Can anyone explain why anyobe would make such a comment? Is it just pedantism with a lack of understanding of the bigger picture? These type of comments drive me crazy, and I only ever see them in programmer fora.
Backspace in some browsers goes to the previous page because that used to be the standard.<p>Nowadays we enter a lot of data in a web page and having to explain to an end user that the browser works differently depending on where the cursor is might be confusing for them.<p>A decade ago most people just used the internet for consuming the page (browsing), sometimes entering a few lines of data. Having the back button go back in your navigation makes sense in that respect as you are "browsing", not creating.<p>Re: "it's totally destructive", actually it is not destructive, you can hit backspace in the middle of your edits, go to the previous page, then go to the forward arrow in your browser and voila.. the text you entered is still there!<p>Of course that isn't true on every website as quite often the site developer is trying to do "smart" things. It is however a standard html feature and I just did that here while typing my text and it works fine on hacker news.<p>Personally I like the back button in my browser to go back in my browsing history, as mentioned by others, this is configurable in firefox.
I think the biggest problem here is a context one. When you use a shortcut inside a software, you don't (usually) think about the field focused. As I, like most of us here, use an IDE or a code editor every day, I think best context-free shortcuts involve more than one special key.<p>Even the alt + arrow shortcut is a bad idea because it mean "go to the beginning of the word" in Mac OS. I had very bad issue with the CMD + Arrow in my Chrome, because when I type I don't use the mouse.<p>Ctrl + CMD + Arrow is the perfect shortcut for me (and I think, for every XCode users).
Consider how most users interact with a page. I personally click to highlight text, use my mouse wheel to set the page just so, and I type. A lot. And I'm a fast typer. And I hit backspace. A lot. Why should I lose all my work because I'm not a cursor focus savant, or someone who never types? Because if you're a typer, this affects you. This happened to me at my job, causing me to lose hours of search and fill-in information, information that is necessary for me to keep my job. And it loses a lot of productivity for a lot of other people as well. Learn to use [Alt]+[←]. I do it one-handed all day long. And if your needs are so specialized that you require a single-button solution, you should be able to get that by changing a setting from the default, and not forcing everyone else to live with the ejector seat button doubling as the turn-signal.
PSA for anyone who is tempted to copy and paste the jQuery example posted by 'pathfinder': Make sure you account for "radio" and "checkbox" input types. They don't handle the backspace key the same way an <input type="text"> or <textarea> would.
"Back in 9/26/95, the Backspace key was mapped for go up one directory in Windows Explorer. This could be the reason why Microsoft also used the Backspace key on their IE for back/up a page. Of course, this is pure speculation on my part :)"<p>So this is leftover damage from Microsoft's bizarre campaign to fuse Internet Explorer with Windows Explorer? Why do I suddenly want to hurt someone?
I wanted to add that I use the backspace quite a lot, and have found the opposite situation which might shed light on why Google likes it. When I hit a google search in my history, hoogle quickly puts the text focus in their main box so my backspace now starts erasing what I wrote rather than going further in the history, and I consider doing another search
Ironically I've become so custom to using backspace for navigating back that I constantly end up swearing when I use it on sites that hijack text-input like Google for instance, where pressing backspace will focus on the search-field, delete the last character and immediately perform a new search.
I suppose if you want to answer a question you have to understand the context, and as with reproducing bugs, you have to know the steps to recreate the problem.<p>It's not like they're being purposefully obnoxious - no more than when people answer with, 'why would you want do that?'
My laptops have different keyboard layouts which leads me to often press backspace in error when attempting to press page up/down keys.<p>I don't really care if it's the default or not, I would just want the option to turn it off in Chrome.
I've only just noticed that Safari doesn't do this. I'm almost certain I used to extensively use backspace for navigation; since starting to use a trackpad almost exclusively, I've replaced that with swiping.
Isn't the number of occurrences of this behaviour directly proportional to the amount of already-filled-in form fields?<p>- "Murphy's Law"