From: Earle Martin Date: 11:51 on 19 Dec 2004 Subject: Backspace meaning "go back" in browsers What fucktard decided that hitting "backspace" should cause your browser to go back a page? There are ALREADY NAVIGATION SHORTCUTS. (In my case [Firefox], Alt-Left Arrow means "go back".) The only time that I ever use the backspace key like that is in error. There are lots of different kinds of mistaken ways to hit it, too, like typing in a text field and accidentally changing the focus to the rest of the page or just pressing it by error because on my keyboard it's RIGHT NEXT TO THE FUCKING PAGE DOWN BUTTON. Gah.
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 14:46 on 19 Dec 2004 Subject: Re: Backspace meaning "go back" in browsers > What fucktard decided that hitting "backspace" should cause your browser to > go back a page? There are ALREADY NAVIGATION SHORTCUTS. One of the myriad fucktards who decided that something that should be as basic and user-configurable as keyboard mappings for graphical applications are nestled so deeply in layers of code and macros and triggers and input chains that not only are they not easily configurable by typical users but they're not practically configurable by people like us. Unless a program (application, window manager, display server, GUI, what have you), was written in 1978 to fit in 64k or less memory, it should have a table that looks something like this: Key Code Context Command -------- ------- ------- backspace input erase-left backspace * page-back And an interface that lets you change it easily and interactively. And this needs to operate at EVERY level. Keyboard to logical key name, triggering plug-ins, mapping keys to GUI operations, and so on. The only GUI that even manages to do a decent job of PART of this is the oldest and most primitive one around... the newer ones delegate it to a twisty mass of obscure hooks like amateur macrame made from rosebushes. I mean, for god's sake, I wrote a file browser in C on the PDP-11 that was so crammed for space that after it started up it wrote the environment area to a tempfile and used the 1k freed up as a file buffer. And it still allocated 128 bytes to a table like this. There's code I wrote on Soureforge right now that managed to cram this kind of capability into an interpreter that had to fit into less than 40k so it was usable on Xenix in small model. I wrote a full-screen editor whose SOURCE CODE fit in less than 10k, that I used on modestly configured micros with 16k of RAM, that let you modify keytab command char a => append char b => back-word char c => change ... keytab insert 32 127 range => self-insert ctrl [ => end-table ... Here we are, it's 22 years later, I'm using a computer that has not one but two processors, from two different companies, that are each a good four years behind the state of the art, and they can still do in real-time work that took a dedicated high-end minicomputer ten hours a frame to complete back when I was writing that code... it's got what may be the most sophisticated user interface in general use on this planet... and yet there is still no component responsible for command dispatch at ANY level. WHAT THE FUCK ARE THESE PEOPLE SMOKING?
From: Paul Mc Auley Date: 08:43 on 20 Dec 2004 Subject: Re: Backspace meaning "go back" in browsers On Sun, Dec 19, 2004 at 11:51:47AM +0000, Earle Martin wrote: | What fucktard decided that hitting "backspace" should cause your browser to | go back a page? There are ALREADY NAVIGATION SHORTCUTS. (In my case | [Firefox], Alt-Left Arrow means "go back".) The only time that I ever use That would be the same maternal copulation obessed morons who decided that it's okay to map Ctrl-U to 'View Source', because obviously there would be no reason for me to want to be able to clear say, the URL field and then paste something into it. And of course I don't trip over this one every time I reflexively go to clear a text field. Grr. Paul
From: Geoff Richards Date: 13:13 on 20 Dec 2004 Subject: Re: Backspace meaning "go back" in browsers On Mon, Dec 20, 2004 at 08:43:44AM +0000, Paul Mc Auley wrote: > On Sun, Dec 19, 2004 at 11:51:47AM +0000, Earle Martin wrote: > | What fucktard decided that hitting "backspace" should cause your browser to > | go back a page? There are ALREADY NAVIGATION SHORTCUTS. (In my case > | [Firefox], Alt-Left Arrow means "go back".) The only time that I ever use > > That would be the same maternal copulation obessed morons who decided that > it's okay to map Ctrl-U to 'View Source', because obviously there would be > no reason for me to want to be able to clear say, the URL field and then > paste something into it. > > And of course I don't trip over this one every time I reflexively go to > clear a text field. With Firefox on Linux the Ctrl-U in text boxes actually works as god intended. The trouble is, Firefox (and Gecko in general) has a habit of sometimes letting the focus wander off to who knows where. Sometimes that means you still get view-source, or worse, nothing happens at all and you've no idea what you just prodded with Ctrl-U or what it might have done about it. Galeon used to be even more of a fucker in this respect. You'd be there for five minutes trying to work out why the page refused to scroll based on keyboard input, giving your fingers cramps by trying to scroll with the mouse all the time, and eventually realise that all along you'd been scrolling some other tab. Thanks Galeon for that clever DWIM. Clearly whenever I want to use the keyboard extensively in one tab my first action is to hide it and look at something unrelated.
From: Luke Kanies
Date: 15:22 on 20 Dec 2004
Subject: Re: Backspace meaning "go back" in browsers
Geoff Richards wrote:
>
> With Firefox on Linux the Ctrl-U in text boxes actually works as god
> intended. The trouble is, Firefox (and Gecko in general) has a habit of
> sometimes letting the focus wander off to who knows where. Sometimes
> that means you still get view-source, or worse, nothing happens at all
> and you've no idea what you just prodded with Ctrl-U or what it might
> have done about it.
>
> Galeon used to be even more of a fucker in this respect. You'd be there
> for five minutes trying to work out why the page refused to scroll based
> on keyboard input, giving your fingers cramps by trying to scroll with
> the mouse all the time, and eventually realise that all along you'd been
> scrolling some other tab. Thanks Galeon for that clever DWIM. Clearly
> whenever I want to use the keyboard extensively in one tab my first
> action is to hide it and look at something unrelated.
>
Man, if we're going to go there in browsers....
The stupid scroll wheel in Firefox is just crazy -- you're scrolling
down with the mouse icon in the middle of the browser, and suddenly it
stops. Why? Well, of course, because you just passed over a web object
that can scroll independently. What is this object? Why, it's an ad.
Does the ad have scroll bars? Why no, but it doesn't matter. So you
must move your mouse somewhere else, hopefully no place that can scroll,
and continue your scroll.
Which leads right into the "wtf is wrong with focus in web browsers?"
discussion. I mean, really. Why should I _ever_ be in a situation
where the scroll wheel works but typing and/or arrow keys don't work?
The scroll wheel always works on whatever the mouse is sitting over (I'm
assuming this is the case whether focus-follows-mouse is on or not, but
I've not tried it with FFM off), while the app maintains its own
definition of focus for the keyboard. So now we have the system
maintaining a per-window keyboard and mouse focus and the app
maintaining a separate focus for the keyboard and mouse. I could imagine
a more confusing interface, but it would take drugs and serious effort.
Even worse, how could I ever get into a situation where the arrow keys
or the pg{up/down} keys do nothing discernable? As already discussed,
the scroll wheel still works (assuming the mouse never passes over
anything but text), but the keyboard doesn't. Oh, but you're not using
your mouse right now, you're navigating entirely from the keyboard? In
your dreams you are. Because once some stupid website has managed to
make it so that "the whole web page" doesn't have focus, there is no
means of giving it focus via the keyboard -- you have to click, and, of
course, you have to make sure your click doesn't hit something that
results in you being taken elsewhere.
I would use my mouse soooooo much less if my web browser weren't so
freaking stupid.
Luke
From: peter (Peter da Silva)
Date: 19:08 on 20 Dec 2004
Subject: Re: Backspace meaning "go back" in browsers
> Even worse, how could I ever get into a situation where the arrow keys
> or the pg{up/down} keys do nothing discernable?
Because for some reason widgets that have the keyboard focus don't pass
keys they don't have a binding for to the parent.
What really blows my mind about keyboard focus in Firefox is that tooltips
take the focus!
From: Robin Stephenson Date: 14:49 on 20 Dec 2004 Subject: RE: Backspace meaning "go back" in browsers I regularly spend time editing large textfields (internal Wiki pages), and every now and then I hit the Emacs kill-region keystroke ... Ctrl-W ... augh! Why can't Firefox check to see if there's unsubmitted form data before deleting the tab containing my work? I tried to send this message with Thunderbird, but it crashed.
From: Hakim Cassimally Date: 14:58 on 20 Dec 2004 Subject: Re: Backspace meaning "go back" in browsers I am in Squirrelmail, reading my web-spam. I induce RSI by clicking on 20 boxes of penis enhancements and urgent business propositions ready for deletion (yes, I could use Squirrelmail's "Select All" feature but such reasonableness is not what hate is made of). But hark! *This* email might not be spam, let's have a look. <click> Oh, it *was* spam. Let's go back to the mail index. Where, of course, my browser has decided that, it won't go *back* to the page, retaining ticked checkboxes and scrollbar settings. No, it will refresh the page. Because obviously that's what I wanted. Firefox at least performs its hateful idiocy speedily. IE tells me this was POSTed information - am I sure I want to send the information again? but doesn't offer an option "No you moron, just take me to the fucking page already". Safari gives not one but 2 popup messages, and then takes me back to the page at a leisurely pace, having selected some of the ticked check-boxes at random. Think different. This kind of annoyance happens with a lot of corporate POST-happy sites: thetrainline (hate hate hate) and so on. Why can't browsers go back sanely? Some of them can: Opera handles these sensibly (if the page is still cached, just show the cached HTML including any form fillage and scrollbar location info) as it was. After all, if you *really* wanted to refresh, there's a perfectly good refresh button, right? (In case you're wondering, Opera is hateful in other ways, such as not being free, having a brilliant concept for e-mail which is let down by a buggy implemetation which sometimes crashes randomly, and doesn't handle IMAP, but at least it can handle something as simple as going back.) -- osfamerom
From: Juerd Date: 15:08 on 20 Dec 2004 Subject: Re: Backspace meaning "go back" in browsers Your MUA's word wrapping sucks. Fortunately, my editor (vim) sucks much less and can fix this when replying. Hurrah. Hakim Cassimally skribis 2004-12-20 14:58 (+0000): > But hark! *This* email might not be spam, let's have a look. <click> > Oh, it *was* spam. Let's go back to the mail index. Where, of course, > my browser has decided that, it won't go *back* to the page, retaining > ticked checkboxes and scrollbar settings. No, it will refresh the > page. Because obviously that's what I wanted. You know you should have opened in a new window or tab anyway. Admit it. Juerd
From: Hakim Cassimally
Date: 15:27 on 20 Dec 2004
Subject: Re: Backspace meaning "go back" in browsers
Juerd wrote:
> You know you should have opened in a new window or tab anyway. Admit it.
Should? I tend to use tabs to
a) keep multiple windows open
b) as short term bookmarks ("I want to look at that link, but I'll
just finish reading this page first")
Retraining myself to use tabs in a different way, which I find
counter-intuitive would certainly fix part of the problem I'm moaning
about. Except that I'd occasionally forget to do it, and would then get
annoyed. And anyway, this isn't hates-lusers.com, it's the software
that's broken and I hates it! Opera can go back without forcing me to
retrain myself.
<reverse snip>
>Your MUA's word wrapping sucks. Fortunately, my editor (vim) sucks much
>less and can fix this when replying. Hurrah.
>
>
vim++, how do you use it as an email editor?
me-- trying to manually wrap messages and getting it wrong. (At my old
works setup, the client wrapped at x characters per line, and the server
wrapped at y - where x != y - causing much amusement.)
--
osfameron
From: Chris Devers Date: 15:29 on 20 Dec 2004 Subject: Re: Backspace meaning "go back" in browsers On Mon, 20 Dec 2004, Hakim Cassimally wrote: > vim++, how do you use it as an email editor? As a plugin for an editor like Mutt or Pine. With Thunderbird, as far as I know, you're on your own.
From: Jason Diamond Date: 16:06 on 20 Dec 2004 Subject: Re: Backspace meaning "go back" in browsers Chris Devers wrote: >On Mon, 20 Dec 2004, Hakim Cassimally wrote: > >>vim++, how do you use it as an email editor? > >As a plugin for an editor like Mutt or Pine. > >With Thunderbird, as far as I know, you're on your own. http://texturizer.net/thunderbird/extensions/#exteditor I'm writing this in Vim with this extension on Windows. Don't know if it works elswhere. -- Jason
From: Ann Barcomb Date: 15:39 on 20 Dec 2004 Subject: Re: Backspace meaning "go back" in browsers Juerd wrote: > You know you should have opened in a new window or tab anyway. Admit it. I'm kind of fumble-fingered. To open a new tab in Safari, I have to hold down the apple key whilst clicking on the link. Although I usually manage to hit the apple key, it would appear that I frequently don't hold it down with enough force, because I end up following the link in the same tab, even when that's not what I wanted to do. On my workstation, with Mozilla, it's even worse. There have been times when I *know* I've clicked the correct button but it still insists on opening in the same tab. I think I've ranted about this previously. So, anyhow, I'm inclined to agree with the original poster. It pisses me off too that the result of a POST request doesn't seem to be cached for later viewing.
From: Juerd
Date: 16:11 on 20 Dec 2004
Subject: Re: Backspace meaning "go back" in browsers
Hakim Cassimally skribis 2004-12-20 15:27 (+0000):
> >Your MUA's word wrapping sucks. Fortunately, my editor (vim) sucks much
> >less and can fix this when replying. Hurrah.
> vim++, how do you use it as an email editor?
I use mutt. It does not have an internal editor. I use this line in
~/.muttrc:
set editor="vim -c 'set et tw=72 comments=nb:>' +/^$ ++"
Juerd
From: Abigail Date: 21:06 on 20 Dec 2004 Subject: Re: Backspace meaning "go back" in browsers On Mon, Dec 20, 2004 at 03:27:22PM +0000, Hakim Cassimally wrote: > > vim++, how do you use it as an email editor? EDITOR=vim; export EDITOR And there's a special section in hell reserved for application authors whose application needs to modify text, and who don't respect EDITOR or VISUAL. This includes most webwowser authors. Abigail
From: Foofy Date: 18:19 on 20 Dec 2004 Subject: Re: Backspace meaning "go back" in browsers On Mon, 20 Dec 2004 14:58:35 +0000, Hakim Cassimally <hakim@xxxxxxx.xxx> wrote: > Some of them can: Opera handles these sensibly (if the page is still > > cached, just > show the cached HTML including any form fillage and scrollbar location > info) as it > was. After all, if you *really* wanted to refresh, there's a perfectly > good refresh > button, right? This is another reason Opera sucks less for dialup than Firefox. Do you know how much time is wasted waiting for Gecko and IE to step back to the page I was just looking at two seconds ago?
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 19:05 on 20 Dec 2004 Subject: Re: Backspace meaning "go back" in browsers > I regularly spend time editing large textfields (internal Wiki pages), > and every now and then I hit the Emacs kill-region keystroke ... Ctrl-W > ... augh! Why can't Firefox check to see if there's unsubmitted form > data before deleting the tab containing my work? There was actually a bug opened on the Mac version about closing windows on unsibmitted forms because that's a violation of the Apple HIG, though it's worth noting that Apple violates it themselves in Safari. I think this would be a good idea on ANY platform.
From: Simon Batistoni Date: 16:15 on 20 Dec 2004 Subject: Re: Backspace meaning "go back" in browsers On 19/12/04 11:51 +0000, Earle Martin wrote: > What fucktard decided that hitting "backspace" should cause your browser to > go back a page? There are ALREADY NAVIGATION SHORTCUTS. (In my case > [Firefox], Alt-Left Arrow means "go back".) Perhaps the developers have been indulging in a lot of <ahem> "one-handed surfing". To simulate the effect, place your right hand below your desk, and then attempt to press Alt-Left Arrow with only the fingers of your left hand. Difficult, no? ;)
From: Chris Devers Date: 16:23 on 20 Dec 2004 Subject: Re: Backspace meaning "go back" in browsers On Mon, 20 Dec 2004, Simon Batistoni wrote: > Perhaps the developers have been indulging in a lot of <ahem> > "one-handed surfing". > > To simulate the effect, place your right hand below your desk, and > then attempt to press Alt-Left Arrow with only the fingers of your > left hand. Difficult, no? So, let's all chip in and spend 10USD to get one of those newfangled keyboards that has [alt] on both sides of the spacebar. Problem solved!
From: Juerd Date: 16:30 on 20 Dec 2004 Subject: Re: Backspace meaning "go back" in browsers Chris Devers skribis 2004-12-20 11:23 (-0500): > So, let's all chip in and spend 10USD to get one of those newfangled > keyboards that has [alt] on both sides of the spacebar. > Problem solved! On my box, back/forward navigation works only with left alt. I don't want to map right alt to left alt because I use right alt, not left alt, for composing characters. Juerd
From: Jonathan Stowe Date: 20:35 on 20 Dec 2004 Subject: Re: Backspace meaning "go back" in browsers On Mon, 2004-12-20 at 16:30, Juerd wrote: > Chris Devers skribis 2004-12-20 11:23 (-0500): > > So, let's all chip in and spend 10USD to get one of those newfangled > > keyboards that has [alt] on both sides of the spacebar. > > Problem solved! > > On my box, back/forward navigation works only with left alt. I don't > want to map right alt to left alt because I use right alt, not left alt, > for composing characters. Ah, for this purpose I use the peculiar and otherwise seemingly purposeless key just left of the left Alt which appears to be a monochrome rendition of the flag of England, this leave me with another spare key which looks like a top view of someone trying to shove a spear into a toaster right of the right Alt key .... /J\
From: Earle Martin Date: 16:27 on 20 Dec 2004 Subject: Re: Backspace meaning "go back" in browsers On Mon, Dec 20, 2004 at 04:15:39PM +0000, Simon Batistoni wrote: > To simulate the effect, place your right hand below your desk, and > then attempt to press Alt-Left Arrow with only the fingers of your > left hand. Difficult, no? Luckily for one-handed typists, some keyboards have an "alt" on both sides of the space bar. Yes, so does mine. That's a coincidence. *cough*
From: David Cantrell Date: 16:46 on 20 Dec 2004 Subject: Re: Backspace meaning "go back" in browsers On Mon, Dec 20, 2004 at 04:15:39PM +0000, Simon Batistoni wrote: > On 19/12/04 11:51 +0000, Earle Martin wrote: > > What fucktard decided that hitting "backspace" should cause your browser to > > go back a page? There are ALREADY NAVIGATION SHORTCUTS. (In my case > > [Firefox], Alt-Left Arrow means "go back".) > Perhaps the developers have been indulging in a lot of <ahem> > "one-handed surfing". > > To simulate the effect, place your right hand below your desk, and > then attempt to press Alt-Left Arrow with only the fingers of your > left hand. Difficult, no? They should turn on <fnarr /> sticky keys <fnarr />.
From: Smylers
Date: 23:28 on 03 Feb 2005
Subject: Re: Backspace meaning "go back" in browsers
Earle Martin writes:
> What fucktard decided that hitting "backspace" should cause your
> browser to go back a page?
Ben Goodger decided it for 'Firefox' on Linux. It, and the 'Mozilla'
suite, was apparently doing that on Windows for some time (for 'IE'
compatibility, I think). On Linux BkSpc was a no-op, and Ben decided
Linux users would also benefit from another keystroke for moving back,
so that when they hit the ingrained keystroke for paging up instead of
merely being mildly irritated by nothing happening, you can be properly
annoyed by being on a different page to what you wanted.
Fortunately I've now found how to make BkSpc mean page-up in 'Firefox'
(on Linux anyway; not tested elsewhere). And, fortunately (from the
point of view of keeping it on-topic on this list), it's hateful:
1 Install the 'keyconfig' extension.
2 Restart 'Firefox', because it can't possibly recognize a new
extension without you losing all your state.
3 Go to the 'Extensions' window and discover the 'Options' button for
the 'keyconfig' extension is greyed out, because this extension has
put its config in a different place from most other extensions.
4 So go to the 'Tools' menu and choose the new 'Keyconfig' item. On
the way past inadvertently make a mental note that its shortcut is
Ctrl+Shift+F12.
(At some point in the future you can try pressing that key
combination, only to discover that the 'undoclosetab' extension also
uses it, so it doesn't bring up the 'Keyconfig' window anyway,
despite the label on the menu. Because it would be too hard to
ensure that the code that determines the shortcut keys shown on
menus used the same algorithm as that which determines what happens
when you press a shortcut key.)
5 Click on the second row labelled 'Back' (yup, cos actions that have
alternative keystrokes need multiple rows in the table -- but only
those actions to which the browser developers have assigned multiple
keystrokes by default have multiple rows; you can't add alternatives
to any action), while trying to avoid thinking about why there's a
row labelled 'Browser:Back' (assigned to Ctrl+[) and how that action
might differ from just 'Back'.
6 Note that "Backspace" has appeared in a textbox under the list.
Focus that textbox, and the text becomes highlighted. Attempt to
remove the text by pressing BkSpc, but discover nothing happens.
Try pressing Del and see the text "Del" appear in the box. Give up
on that and press the 'Disable' button instead.
7 Scroll down the rest of the list and discover there is no 'Page Up'
action to which a new keystroke can be assigned. Still having BkSpc
not going back is halfway there. Press 'OK'.
8 "Alert: Changes affect only new windows." Grrr.
9 Quit and restart the browser again to check that this works.
10 Find the main 'Firefox' directory, and as root edit the file
res/builtin/platformHTMLBindings.xml. Note that this will affect
all users; the per-user version of this file doesn't actually work.
Also note that you're going to have to redo this every time you
upgrade 'Firefox'. Search for "cmd_scrollPageUp", and discover that
it's assigned to Shift+Space.
11 (This step is now optional, but it wasn't the first time I tried
this.) Search for documentation as to what the rune is for the
BkSpc key. Find several places which apparently document it, for
example as VK_BACK_SPACE, but where quitting and restarting the
browser shows this not to work. Eventually discover it's VK_BACK.
12 Add this line to the platformHTMLBindings.xml file, just below the
Shift+Space line:
<handler event="keypress" keycode="VK_BACK" command="cmd_scrollPageUp" />
13 Quit and restart the browser one last time. You can now use Space
to page down and BkSpc to page up!
I think I'd actually prefer for this not to be possible than for it to
be achievable but only in such a convoluted way. And don't think about
missing out steps 1-7 above: merely adding the line to
platformHTMLBindings.xml is not sufficient for the end result.
Smylers
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 01:02 on 04 Feb 2005 Subject: Re: Backspace meaning "go back" in browsers > compatibility, I think). On Linux BkSpc was a no-op, and Ben decided > Linux users would also benefit from another keystroke for moving back, > so that when they hit the ingrained keystroke for paging up instead of > merely being mildly irritated by nothing happening, you can be properly > annoyed by being on a different page to what you wanted. The ingrained keystroke for paging up is ^B, which opens up your bookmarks or some daft think like that. It's certainly not ^H, which means "backSPACE" (or, for the heretics, "help"). X11 users have been spoiled, by the way. No other platform or application has anywhere NEAR as clean and easy to use a keymap mechanism as X11. Which is pretty scary, when you think about the multiple layers of keycodes and keymaps you've gotten used to juggling on X.
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