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Comment by silicon2401 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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I've used this feature for decades and have never had any issues with lost progress. In fact, it's the reason I switched to Firefox in the first place, after Chrome removed it. I really don't understand people's trouble with it.

It works great if you only consume content through the Internet, but if you frequently write text in text fields, it's inevitable that one gets tripped up by it. I run into this problem a little uncommonly, but it does happen. Conversely, I haven't used the hotkey to go back since the 90s, so I'm not sad to see it go.

After you go back inadvertently, if you then move forward the content is still there in the text box. No data loss.

Mouse middle button sideway click is bound to back and forth in the pages, I hope this isn't going away.

This tone is so irksome to me. It's the "works on my machine" fallacy, but with UX. If people experience a bug or UX problem, it really doesn't matter if it's the "fault" of the software or those users.

It matters if it causes a feature you depend on to be removed for dubious reasons.

Well luckily for you, and I am sure others, Firefox will allow you to re-enable this in your browser once version 86 rolls out. As cited from the article:

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.

It's not being removed, the default is being changed. You can still change it, just as you have been able to for some time. I support your ability to use this feature, and I also enjoy firefox because of its customization support, but I think it's reasonable to change the default to match what most people would expect.

Don't people expect backspace at the page level to go back a page, like in the file explorer?

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