Redesigning The "Back" Button 356
TheMatt writes "Nature Science Update is reporting today about research by New Zealand scientists on redesigning how the "Back" button works in your browser.
They point to the fact that the current "Back" is more of an "Up" in a stack of pages. They propose a system that records all pages visited. A good summary page of their efforts in web navigation (including a interesting thumbnail-style "Back" menu) can be found on their page."
They should... (Score:4, Funny)
Important research!
Re:They should... (Score:2)
If I'm not mistaken..... (Score:4, Funny)
Doesnt Amazon have a patent on this??
(groan)
Re:If I'm not mistaken..... (Score:2)
WHY? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:WHY? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:WHY? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:WHY? (Score:2)
Re:WHY? (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, as a previous poster pointed out, the back button also works unintuitively (compared to, say, the standard edit menu Undo function) when you browse to a new page from a page to which you've clicked back (works more like a tree than a chain in that case).
Re:WHY? (Score:2)
- User types "important stuff"
- User hits UNDO
- User types "stupid stuff"
- User wants to go back to "important stuff"
Too bad for the user. UNDO works pretty much the same way that the BACK button does (or vice versa).Re:WHY? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WHY? (Score:2)
This is not correct behaviour. The HTTP 1.1 specification [rfc-editor.org] specifically states (section 13.13) that cache control should not prevent the viewing of stale pages in a browser history.
Re: WHY? (Score:2, Funny)
> The average web browser's "back" feature is almost the only software feature in existence that is universally understood, and works as advertised. If it aint broke...
The problem is that "back" is the wrong way when you're on the other side of the equator.
except it *is* broke! (Score:2)
It's really irritating. In order to get around it, you need to open a new window, which clutters up your desktop.
Perhaps a better back button would mean a lot less windows open for experianced surfers.
Sorry but, (Score:5, Insightful)
I prefer to think of my "back" button as working like a paper book. I generally don't flip pages "up" when going to a previous page, so the "back" terminology is friendly to me.
As for the idea:
All I really need the back button to do, for better efficiency, is to skip posted forms, that's all I want. What did I miss in that article that really make their system stand out from stacking? I like my stacks dammit.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Bah! (Score:2, Funny)
Bah, I thought of this years ago. Back buttons suck. So does the whole linear web browser model. I mean, it's the web, right? Why is it always back and forward? Why don't we see a web (graph) view?
I always wanted a web browser called "Sting" that displayed stuff like this and let you "cut through" the web. ;-)
Re:Bah! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Bah! (Score:2)
Yeah, this is why i see having a "full screen" (or however big your window is) graph view, and when you click on a node, the node replaces it. If you click on a link, it would "iconify" the content back to its node on the graph view, add it to the graph, load the new content, and then show it to you.
It's interesting about the interactivity bit. I've seen various projects that do similar things, but most are toys/proofs-of-concept or not very developed (like the wiki stuff, although I haven't looked at that much so maybe it's more advanced than I realize).
Thanks for the book reference, I'll check it out sometime.
Not good (Score:3, Insightful)
no.. it is "Back" (Score:3, Insightful)
Sidebar - History in Mozilla (Score:4, Insightful)
Lave the back button alone. It does what it's supposed to perfectly well. As long as it's not applied to file-systems or any other PC arcana, it's perfect for the task.
If you want to make something that works for both file-systems or GUI shell browsing and web browsing, design a new tool. Don't overload the existing tools and make them useless for both tasks.
Didn't OS/2 Warp have this? (Score:2, Interesting)
Does anybody remember the OS/2 Warp (3.0) system web browser? I vaguely remember a really nifty tree display for page history that would show everywhere you were at one time and everywhere you went from there.
Re:Didn't OS/2 Warp have this? (Score:5, Interesting)
I do.
It had a complete Web page showing all the links and hyper links that you visited.
The first page was at the root level, then each link from that page was nested, with each subsequent link nested in turn. Each link was shown with the page title and was a link so you could re-visit that page.
After a few hours it was interesting to see your browsing process. First you were here, then you went there, and there, and
I miss that feature. It showed Web browsing in a non-linear fashion.
Re:Didn't OS/2 Warp have this? (Score:3, Interesting)
One could save an entire session just by bringing up the tree in a browser window and saving it. That meant that, for instance, one could work through search results or links on a page one-by-one, hitting "back" one each page, and end up with a storable record of everything visited.
Those were the days, when web browsing was considered something more than a Markov process.
Making this really useful (Score:4, Funny)
Why not make it *really* easy and develop a "forward" button that would actually take you to the piece of the Mega-pagecount-poorly-indexed-searchbuttonless web portal of doom that you're really interested in? They could call it the Psychic Fast Forward or some such.
Base it off of all of the Total Information Awareness data that the government wants to gather about us, so it predicts what you want.
And then place locks on your browser so that you really only want to go to the major sites.
Then eugenically engineer society so that you don't even know that you ever wanted to go somewhere else.
NOW we're making the web useful!!!!!!!!!!!
Re:Making this really useful (Score:2)
Or has it been done?
Back in Phoenix, IE and Chimera (Score:3, Interesting)
Chimera and Phoenix keep that information in the box, saving me from having to copy the text, just in case.
A feature I would like similar to 'back' would be to reopen the last page I was on when I last closed the browser. Often, I close the window and find that I still need some info that was on that last page. I hate browser history ie: I have that turned off, so I can't hunt through the history to quickly find the page.
That feature would be nifty. Or something to make me less of a spaz.
Re:Back in Phoenix, IE and Chimera (Score:2)
I recommend copious ammounts of pot brownies.
Er, already can do that. (Score:2)
This only happens to me on slashdot. (Score:2)
Yeah, but that only seems to happen on slashdot. It's really fucking annoying. I think it has something to do with the way caching is set up.
Um... (Score:2)
What about Forward? (Score:3, Interesting)
In the current implementations, the forward button loses it's registry once you go back/up and then click a link. It's kind of like creating a new time line in your browser...you lose all the pages you had been to in the previous line...before you went back. Why should it be that way?
-R
Re:What about Forward? (Score:2)
Given that the forward button can only take you to one place (unless you want it to open a bunch of new browser windows when you click it), how else would it work, logically?
Re:What about Forward? (Score:2)
A) You click the back button. A back operation is performed. The forward button enables, allowing you to undo the back operation.
B) You click the forward button. A back operation is undone. The forward button is enabled only if there are more back operations to undo.
C) You click a link on a page, which navigates you to a new page. The forward button disables itself, because it doesn't know what you might click next. The browser could possibly preload a predicted page, however that would be different functionality than in A and probably should be a different button altogether... the same functionality could be done (and is already being done in some browsers) w/o a button at all.
Re:What about Forward? (Score:2)
A) Assuming forward is active because we have just done one or more backs, it would activate with a list all of the routes previously taken from the current point.
B) It is also active if a previously followed link path from the current page exists.
C) Correct. Forward cannot be active after following a fresh link, but back is inactive before you start browsing. How is this relevant?
I don't presume to have it all worked out, but I think my post to the parent presents a start.
Re:What about Forward? (Score:2)
-> C -> D
-> D
I think you could do something similar with "back".
Of course, if I was really motivated, I'd jump into one of the plethora of OSS browsers and implement this, but instead I'll just make like a typical
Re:What about Forward? (Score:2)
1994, and I've yet to discover a use for it. Is it in case you hit
back by mistake, or what? If I were redesigning the web browser
toolbars to conserve space, the forward button is the first thing I
would drop. (Well, that's assuming you've already turned off the
things Navigator's prefs dialog lets you turn off easily, such as
print and home.) I'd probably remove stop too and use the extra
space to make the history button a first-class citizen. (Oh, that's
another thing about the forward button: the history list gives you
all of its functionality plus a great deal more. This is also true
of back, but back you use so constantly that it needs to be easy to
hit quickly.)
[1] Except for non-GUI/non-mouse browsers, which have an equivalent
keystroke that does exactly the same thing. Oh, and telnet to
port 80 doesn't have it either.
Some sites already redesign the Back button (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Some sites already redesign the Back button (Score:3, Informative)
Btw, in most cases, sites did not break the back button intentionally. They were just trying to redirect from one URL to another, and didn't know that Netscape 4 required you to use a specific redirect method in order to avoid leaving an entry in session history.
what? (Score:2)
No, redesign the FORWARD button... (Score:4, Funny)
If the Back button takes me to where I've been, why doesn't the Forward button take me where I haven't been yet? I want a button that takes me to where I'm going to go before I ask it. Is that too much to ask?
Re:No, redesign the FORWARD button... (Score:2, Interesting)
you want to go... (Score:2)
*ducks*
Actually... (Score:2, Interesting)
Programmers simply need to rethink the history of page clicks as a tree instead of a stack. Navigation back on a tree always takes you to a root. It is at that point when the user should have the option of selecting different branches that have occured. For example:
1. Start at Yahoo
2. Read a news article
3. Go back to main page
4. Go to Slashdot
Now, at this point, if you hit the BACK button, it should take you to Yahoo. When there, however, the FORWARD button should offer you the choice of jumping to the article you read, or going to slashdot. That would solve the problem nicely. Except, if you do a lot of browsing, that dynamic tree could get awfully big in memory.
IE and Mozilla already have this. (Score:2)
First, the back button in IE and Mozilla has a drop-down that will show the previous 9 or so pages.
Second, there is the History button/menu, which will display a full listing broken down by site and date.
Maybe some of these "academics" should actually pull their heads out for a look at the real world now and again.
Uh? (Score:2)
Every browser I've ever used has a back button that takes you through the history of every page you've visited, not just index pages.
What am I missing here?
Re:Uh? (Score:2)
Indeed. In particular:
> They have replaced the current stacking system, which only records
> index pages, with one that records every page in the order it was
> visited.
Huh? What current stacking system are they talking about? I have
NEVER seen that behavior. Nor would it make any sense whatsoever;
the web is designed around the principle that all pages are
horizontal from one another (which is why it's an href, not a vref).
Some experimentation has been done with the concept of "Up", either
by using the link tags or by s/[^\/]+\/?// URI trimming, but while
both have theoretical merit, such a small percentage of the web is
structured in the expected way that these features turn out to be
you never use or something you use very rarely (respectively).
As far as recording only index pages (does that mean only index.*,
or does it mean something else?), I thought about that for almost
four seconds, but in the end I concluded that it's imbecilic.
It's really a tree structure (Score:2)
It makes more sense to have an explorer-style tree view than a history. That way you can navigate a site and still have an idea where you have been.
Re:It's really a tree structure (Score:2, Interesting)
You're totally right about the functionality required. The problem I see here is user interface. While a tree diagram is quite easy to follow, a tree similar to the file browser one does take up rather a lot of space.
Thinking about it, I tend to use Mozilla's tabs as a means to launch several links from the same page, which allows me to flick thhough them, and return. This allows most of the functionality, but it does get confusing remembering where the pages were linked from. Perhaps what we need is a nested tabs view or something.
Re:It's really a tree structure (Score:3, Interesting)
BACK BUTTON ^
Page3 (last visited) | page4 (linked from page3)
| page5 (linked from page3)
| page6 (linked from page3)
Page2 (linked from page1)
Page1 (started here)
You are currently on page7, linked from page3. As you can see, it only branches when the back button is hit on page4,5 or 6, and you choose another link on page3. So back-button behavior is preserved, but enhanced to prevent information (clicked link) loss.
OS X panel view (Score:2, Interesting)
So what? (Score:2)
after you read the article... (Score:2)
make sure you go "up" to slashdot, rather than "back" to slashdot to post a comment...
wtf???
they need to backup and rethink their verbiage (pun intended). psychologically, the way the human mind thinks of time and travelling, the back button just makes too much sense.
It sounds like this has been done (Score:2)
google to the rescue. (Score:2)
"the subjects were extremely enthusiastic" (Score:2)
How about.... (Score:2, Funny)
The article poorly explains things (Score:5, Informative)
It really *is* different; the problem is that the article explains things very poorly. Here's the difference:
With normal browsers, when you click the back button to a previous page, and then follow a new link on the previous page, the page you were on before you clicked the back button and followed a new link, is removed from the list. This is what they mean by "stack" behavior.
What these guys are proposing is that every time you visit a page, it goes into the back list. Thus if you are on, say, page 2, and click the back button to page 1, then follow a link to page 3, the list stored in the back button is 1 - 2 - 3, and you will go back to page 2. In the current system, the list stored would be 1 - 3; page 2 is gone from the list and no longer available via the back button.
So now you know. Regardless, this behavior is already available in I.E. 5.x and above via the History explorer bar. A simple sort by Order Visited Today gets the list exactly as proposed by the article. Except for the thumbnails, however, which is a very good touch.
Personally, I think it would be best to have *two* such buttons; one that has stack behavior (current "back" button), and another that has the proposed temporal behavior; perhaps as a history pull-down menu.
Re:The article poorly explains things (Score:2, Insightful)
They're viewing the forward/back as popping and pulling off of a stack. Your average nontechie has no grasp of what that means, to them, forward/back is analagous to the path you took to get there.
This morning, I left my home and drove on the highway (1), and half asleep took the wrong exit (2). I went back to (1) and continued to work (3). Later when I reverse my route (by going 'back'), I dont want to go to 2 again. The path I took is (1)-(3), the reverse of that is (3)-(1)
The back/forward analogy is perfect as it is.
What these guys describe is (in english) a previous/next or earlier/later feature, not significantly different from the history menu/bar.
And Up/Down is navigating a fixed tree structure (going Up from slashdot.org/yro yields slashdot.org).
Re:The article poorly explains things (Score:2)
Thus if you are on, say, page 2, and click the back button to page 1, then follow a link to page 3, the list stored in the back button is 1 - 2 - 3, and you will go back to page 2.
This alternate behavior would be a nightmare. (and I'm a programmer, so stfu you UI design hippies
Let's say you wanted to repeat this, and go to page 4 (also linked off of page 1). You'd have to go back to page 2, then back to page 1 before you could get to page 4.
Now suppose you wanted to go to page 5. You go back to page 3, then back to page 2, then back to page 1. As you can imagine, this quickly becomes unusable. You have to keep going back through everything you didn't want.
Re:The article poorly explains things (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I'd hate this. If I want to get back to '2' to see the next link on it (to page 6 perhaps), I want to just go back to the most recent step where I visited '2' in the history, not all the way back to the very first time I visited it ever, which if '2' has a lot of links on it I've been reading through, could be buried quite deep.)
The problem is that in reality you browse through the web as a tree of nested links, but the browser only remembers this as a one-dimensional list, not as a tree. It will always be ugly to try to mash what in the real world is a tree into a data structure that is only a list. The only real fix is a user interface that presents you with your browsing history as a tree rather than as a one-dimensional list. This might be implementable through cascading menus when you click-and-hold the back button rather than just a single list.
So you might see something like this:
- Page 1
- Page 1.1
- Page 1.2
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
(Imagine the above done as a cascading pulldown menu. Slashdot filtered out my attempts to create ascii-art to show it the right way.)What these guys propose is worse than what we have now, in my opinion.
Re:The article poorly explains things (Score:3, Interesting)
History??? (Score:2)
That reminds me of an article I once read on IE 5 in which the author said "I wish the favorites were available via a drop-down menu like in Netscape." Sheesh...
The back button sucks. (in other words) (Score:2)
Just because it isn't broke doesn't mean it can't be fixed. Windows is universally understood but that doesn't mean a more powerful solution can be found/hould be used/be optional for those who can handle it.
Re:The back button sucks. (in other words) (Score:2)
I would argue that anyone who uses the back button *wants* those 3 pages to disappear due to errant navigation. Perhaps a toggleable setting could enable a linear history, but I bet after a while you'd end up using your tab method anyway.
(Note you can keep tab/window use down to 2 by dragging links from a desireable navigation page onto a second, but preexisting, destination page tab/window. I feel this is way more usable than any other back button functionality or options could be... and it is doable in pretty much any browser, even old ones.)
Research not new, problems not small (Score:4, Informative)
The article mentions the non-technical issues as well: "Unsurprisingly, it's harder to return to index pages with this system - so it's easier to get lost in big websites. New users tended to solve problems either very efficiently or very inefficiently." I believe that this is one of the bigger problems the developers of more advanced navigation systems face, how to provide controls that afford the user good access to the information.
I wish them luck. And if you want to see something like it in Mozilla, please vote for bug 21521 on Bugzilla. It's only got 7 votes, which is pathetic.
On the other hand, if no one cares, perhaps the answer really is to just let it drop. Once again, I wish them luck.
2 dimensions (Score:2)
Basically they want a two-dimensional navigation button(s), not the current one-dimensional ones (back/forward).
Back button. (Score:2)
Have both kinds (Score:4, Informative)
The real problem is that the conventional Back and Forward buttons, between them, don't let you traverse the entire tree, but only the right edge. There needs to be some way of getting to the other pages (for example, I'd like to take another look at the article; I can't navigate there in my history, even though it was on my screen two documents ago, nor can I get there from here without either starting from my bookmarks or losing my comment). They use a button which essentially is an "Undo" for following links.
Their results follow from the ability to access your entire history rather than only the right edge, along with using an operation that is frequently the same as the usual design (if you follow a chain of links down, and then go all the way up); this suggests that an approach which retains the regular Back button and adds an "Undo follow" button to go to the document you were on before. Since Forward is relatively rarely used, it could reverse both of these operations, depending on which you did (i.e., undo history navigation).
Re-inventing the wheel? (Score:2)
"Good lord, man, you've invented the history list!"
Chris Mattern
Back + Up (Score:2)
Never try that again.
Forget the back button (Score:2)
Say you're looking at the page:
http://127.0.0.1/page1.html
and then you go to the page:
http://127.0.0.1/page2.html
At that point I want the browser to request
http://127.0.0.1/page3.html
in the background. If it is availible, the forward button should become clickable and take me there.
The code could check for predictible changes between pages, and if it thinks it's found a pattern, it requests it. If the page is there, it turns on the forward button.
It could also be set up to jump to the next anchor in an HTML document, if any exist.
Sounds like a good way to cause confusion (Score:2)
Undo/Redo in editors (Score:2)
If you make a change, Undo it, then make another change, the Redo functionality is gone for the first change. The first change you made is irretrievably lost. At least in most editors.
BTW the article says the Back button "accounts for 40% of all Internet clicks." This might be true for IE users who don't have tabbed browsing (and the article shows a screen shot of IE's back button). I've seen IE users find a bunch of Google matches, click on one, go back, click on the next, go back, etc. I don't see how they can stand it. (Yes they can open new windows but that can be annoying in its own way, and they usually don't.) With Mozilla's tabbed browsing I hardly ever use the back button.
Doesn't address the bigger problem? (Score:2)
What browsers need is a more robust control mechanism that allows the site to control exactly what happens when the navigation buttons are pressed. Moving around in an ecommerce site is a lot different than a message board. Now I'm not saying make it a free-for-all, but people do expect certain "logical" behaviours and many are smart enough to deal with minor shifts in absolute behaviour depending on context. This combined with other improved navigational aids (e.g. like the article, better history, etc) would make EVERYONES life easier.
Er... Researchers on crack? (Score:2)
Cockburn and his colleagues reprogrammed web browsers so that their back button was based on the order of pages, not their hierarchy
See? This just makes no sense. When I click "back", it goes to the previous page I visited. In chronological order. No "hierarchy" involved. The linked article seems to imply otherwise.
Now, if they mean that non-server content, such as the state of a running JS/Java program, or user entered data, will not persist, I can understand their point, but wouldn't *WANT* it to stay around for others to find on my machine later.
Furthermore:
The order-based back button was good at navigating between distant pages.
Now here, I've definitely missed something. How does an order-based back button make it *easier* to go between distant sites? A hierarchical button (if such a thing existed) would do that better.
Overall, either I missed something *REALLY* fundamental in what these guys did, or they did nothing and obscured that fact with lots of talk about irrelevant relational concepts. From the words they chose to use, a back button *already* behaves like what they want to change it to, and the supposed benefits of their change fit better with the behavior they claim the back button already has (which it doesn't).
As the best credit I could give them from the article, I could assume that the author completely misunderstood the research and reversed the two concepts. Thus, the research would actually have the "new" button behavior using a hierarchy of sites, rather than strict chronological behavior.
Let Users Build Own Breadcrumb Trails (Score:2)
The "History" file won't cut it, either, because it, too, forces you to move backwards through everything.
Often, I want to move back to a specific URL I saw earlier in a session, but I don't want to bokmark it. How about allowing users to build their own breadcrumb trails?
They should also work on... (Score:2)
Ok, I've got nothing.
I ask myself, (Score:2)
I want Tree View (Score:2)
Possible features might include using different colors for urls visited in different browser windows; A zoom in/out for deep detailed tree viewing; hover over a URL and get info like when you were there and for how long, etc.
I'd really love to see what my tree looks like at the end of a furious browsing session. Aside from being a practical browsing tool it could even help improve technique and shed light on surfing habits.
Maybe I could even learn not to get sidetracked so darn much.
What we really need... (Score:2)
The benefit for the user would be a clear, standard set of buttons -- as opposed to the often confusing, overly "creative" navigation third-rate designers foist upon us -- and fewer confusing errors.
More of an 'up' button? (Score:2, Insightful)
The back button system may have its problems, but it is far from incorrectly named.
Re:already have it (Score:3, Interesting)
Each press of it takes you back to where you were. The same is true for the IE style Explorer windows, where there is also an "Up" button available. Each functions as you would expect.
If they really want to do some work with back buttons, sort out the problems with frames and scripted web pages first!
Re:already have it (Score:5, Informative)
1) Go to the Slashdot main page at http://slashdot.org
2) Go to the discussion about the back button.
3) Click your back button and go back to the main page
4) Click on the link to the discussion about Microsoft being its own worst enemy.
5) Now try to use your back button to get back to the discussion about the back button. On both Mozilla 1.2.1 and IE 6, that piece of data is gone. You go back to the slashdot main page and then back to the site you visited before slashdot. It is a feature I've been annoyed with for awhile.
At the end of the day, I can't just hit alt+- and revisit every page I've been to.
Why is it gone? Because you went "up" in the directory hierarchy to the main slashdot page and so it erased the back button discussion.
I can get to the page in the history of course. And as I read the article, that's really what they are talking about (at least as I understood it): integrating the history into the back button so that you can more easily retrace your steps.
At least that's what I think they are talking about.
Re:already have it (Score:4, Interesting)
I've always had *another* idea of what the back button might do. Originally most web sites were organized in a somewhat linear fashion, like a book. The top page would have a list of links and you could think of these links as "Chapters". Once you skipped to a chapter, you might page forward in the chapter and finally might transition naturally to the next chapter.
I always thought it would be nice if each page had linking information built into it indicating what the next logical "page" would be as well as the previous logical page. The forward and back buttons would use *that* information first, and only if that information was not available would it go "up" by going back to a page in your history.
With such a system in place, a Google search on "homeschooling" might take me into the center of an article on the general topic of education. Using the forward and back buttons I could visit the entire site in the order the author had intended.
Come to think of it, I think there used to be HTML tags to alter the normal back and forward function, but they were more often used incorrectly, and I haven't seen sites use them much lately.
If the researchers will concentrate on changing the HTML specifications to add sensible tags in this area I'm sure the browsers will follow. Just convincing Micrososft to change the way the buttons work is the wrong way to go.
Re:already have it (Score:2, Interesting)
Mozilla has an "up, next, previous, first, last, etc" set of buttons that you can use to browse an ordered set of pages. go to the magic cauldron [tuxedo.org] for an example. The html listed below makes this work and (i believe...) is part of the html 4 standard.
[link HREF="magic-cauldron-3.html" REL=next]
[link HREF="magic-cauldron-1.html" REL=previous]
[link HREF="magic-cauldron.html#toc2" REL=contents]
Re:already have it (Score:3, Insightful)
>
>[link HREF="magic-cauldron-3.html" REL=next]
> [link HREF="magic-cauldron-1.html" REL=previous]
> [link HREF="magic-cauldron.html#toc2" REL=contents]
Huh? The way I read it, I see:
[link HREF="big_ad_page.html" REL=next]
[link HREF="big_ad_page.html" REL=previous]
[link HREF="big_ad_page.html" REL=contents]
With "big_ad_page.html" being "Hah! You thought disabling Javashit could disable popups and interstitials! Thanks to 'standars', all your back button are belong to us!"
Re:already have it (Score:2)
Re:already have it (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Go to the Slashdot main page at http://slashdot.org
2) Go to the discussion about the back button.
3) Click your back button and go back to the main page
Note: the forward button is active
4) Click on the link to the discussion about Microsoft being its own worst enemy.
5) Now try to use your back button...
The forward button is active again.
The problem isn't with the back button. Its that the forward button doesn't give you options. This can be implemented by considering each website a node in a tree structure. As you visit a hyperlink you go up the tree. When you click back, you go down the tree one step. Forward will bring you up the tree again, but will pick a default unless you specify which branch to follow (to be implemented).
The only problem is that the forward button is typically implemented so that it gives you a list of items to pick so that if you hit back 3 times, you would see the 3 web pages you just visited in reverse order in the list. I think it could be adequately implemented with expanding menus (but this is a UI pain-in-the-ass!).
Re:already have it (Score:5, Interesting)
1. type in www.slashdot.com
2. type in www.yahoo.com
3. hit back
4. type in www.msn.com
Now, try to get to www.yahoo.com using the back button. See? Same thing, no site organization or heirarchies involved anywhere.
Rather, the problem is that the back and forward buttons move you within a linear chain of pages independent of the sites they are on. If you go back in that chain and then type in a new URL, you've truncated off the tail end of that chain and replaced it with the new page.
I've been aware of this effect or years, but I never considered it a problem that required a solution.
Methinks the researchers doth smokest too mucheth. That or they're desperate for more researchbucks(TM).
Re:already have it (Score:4, Insightful)
If I want this discussion to be in my foward/backwardness I would click the big slashdot in the top left. If I do not I click the back button. I personally want to be able to get to the previous sight I viseted in as few backs possible (usually around 3). It were setup the way you want it could easily be 12 or more after going on slashdot. After every 0 coment I choose to read it will set me back even further. Sometimes I like to read the spicif mods on a post, again more things in my history. If every page in my history was in the back button que that would be very bad.
I fI were to decide I was too lazy to check spelling ect. (I am) and that I would be ashamed to post in such a state (I am not), and therefore aborted this comment, I would have all sorts of crap that was worthless in my back button que (I still will, but at least it will have been somethomething).
so you want "undo" (Score:2)
I rarely go back so it doesent matter much to me, but I think when I do sometimes I am surprised because back in my brain is not always what the button wants to do.
Re:already have it (Score:2)
Personally I'd like to be able to get my true chronological history using alt+ -, instead of opening the history window and trying to remember where exactly I was, but I agree with the poster who said that this is pretty far down the list of needed features for browsers.
But the cool thing is that it should be a fairly trivial hack to add to Mozilla.
Re:already have it (Score:2)
(Score:5, Troll) = Stupid question, needs to be answered
(No Offense KaltKalt) I wish my stupid remarks had value.
Re:Registration required. Blah blah blah... (Score:2)
They probably never mentioned it because you don't need one.
Re:Umm..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, first, ignoring your ignorant claim that it can be done in 20 minutes (it would need at least 2 days of QA testing, not to mention tonnes of time in beta), the research is not regarding the code, its regarding the user experience. I can clone the start menu from Windows XP with relatively little effort, but had I actually had to design the Windows XP start menu from scratch, it would have taken a crap load of research. Sure the code is easy, it's the design, and more importantly the human element that is important. If people don't find the menu intuitive they won't use it. Same goes for this 'new' back functionality. Obviously you are thinking about this from the point of view of a code monkey. If everyone were to think like that, computers would still be hard to use for the masses.
So to answer your question, it is research because they are researching how people use the existing back button, what users want the back button to do, what they actually do with it, and how to change the back button to make the majority of internet users happier with it's functionality.
Re:Umm..... (Score:2)
2 days of QA testing? Maybe, if you wanted to get a test group to see what they thought of it.
Re:Does Microsoft read Slashdot? (Score:4, Informative)
It doesn't.
Why does IE choke on PDFs?
It doesn't.
Does anybody really still browse using the single window forward, back method?
Sure, when it's more convenient than opening new windows.
Does MS have anybody working on improving IE?
Yes, and they do that. The problem is that you're expecting them to "improve" it in such a way that lets you use the latest version of their browser with bunches of features on your stone-age computer. You're already using a version of IE which doesn't normally crash with tonnes of windows open, you just have no RAM. 16MB is enough to keep it stable, and there's no reason at all to have a computer with less than that. Hell, I have a Dreamcast with more RAM than that.
Re:Back should mean display perviously view page.. (Score:2)