Chrome Will Soon Stop Using Backspace As A Back Button

When it comes to navigating your browser history, pressing the backspace button on your keyboard can act as a back button for certain browsers, such as Chrome. However it seems that this has not been the greatest idea because a number of users have complained about how accidentally pressing the back button has caused them to lose form data.

So much so that in the latest developer version of Chrome, Google has decided to remove the feature meaning that if this decision sticks, the public build of Chrome should no longer allow users to go back in history using the back button. According to Google developer Ojan Vafai, “Years of user complaints have been enough that we think it’s the right choice to change this given the degree of pain users feel by losing their data and because every platform has another keyboard combination that navigates back.”

He also notes that the change has been flagged so that if the need arises, they can always revert it. Interestingly enough it turns out that while Google’s decision was based on user complaints, a new set of complaints and outcry has arisen following their decision. It seems that this group of users actually do want to keep the feature around.

Google’s senior product manager Tyler Odean says that a compromise could come in the form of an extension. “We’re working to release an extension that will allow users to restore this behaviour. However for users who don’t understand the behaviour of the shortcut, which is the majority of users, the loss of data is also super frustrating and they are less equipped to understand or prevent their frustrations.”

Tyler Lee
Categories: Computers
Tags: Chrome, Google