Comments on: Ubuntu: Make Firefox Backspace Browse Back In History

By: djm

djm — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 19:59:25 +0000

Yes! This is the single most annoying thing about a fresh ubuntu/linux install. Simple fix, cheers.

By: Gordaen

Gordaen — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 06:00:45 +0000

@Jay: I believe anything other than 0 or 1 just disables the button. I have no idea why it would have been set to 2 without having been manually changed.

@Steve: It has to be the left Alt key plus the left arrow (at least on my laptop keyboard), which means I can’t do that with one hand. Continuously taking my hand off the mouse to be able to press the arrow key seems inefficient. If Backspace is set to go back a page, Shift+Backspace goes forward, which can be done with one hand also.

Backspace goes back in most browsers, because the wording “back” and many keyboards actually have a back arrow similar to a browser. Apparently in many Gnome apps, Backspace goes up the page (no idea why though, since there is a Pg Up key…) so that was one of the reasons for the switch. The other claim is that people might press backspace to remove some text and accidentally go to a previous page. In most cases Firefox will remember the form data anyway, so it doesn’t matter, but arguments can be made either way.

By: Steve Parker

Steve Parker — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 01:54:23 +0000

Alt+LeftArrow does the job, too, and Alt+RightArrow does the same job but goes forward through history.

I didn’t know that Backspace had ever equated to History,Back!

By: Jay

Jay — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 01:25:00 +0000

Mine was set to “2″ wtf, as an integer. Jeez. I am glad to see this fix, i almost switched back to windows because of this… yea right. Rock linux

By: Gordaen

Gordaen — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 01:21:59 +0000

I'm glad you found this tip, then. It annoyed me sooo much too, especially when playing Astro Empires (when searching for someone there can be a lot of clicking on solar systems, then going back and clicking a different one). Backspace is setup properly in Windows and OSX by default, but not Linux. I have no idea why. I haven't done a whole lot on the command line with Firefox. Perhaps Mozillazine can help?

By: Jamie

Jamie — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 11:50:10 +0000

Thanks for putting this up! I was searching for something entirely unrelated (Linux command line arguments for Firefox [still looking]), and hit a page that linked to here.

The backspace = history, back, has been a feature I’ve missed A LOT since switching to Linux. I think it’s enabled by default in win but not sure why it’s not in Linux, but never thought to look in about:config.

Anywho, thanks! Post some tips on Firefox command line arguments if you’ve got them!