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Backspace in latest Firefox?
David Jenkins - 18/7/12 at 02:24 PM

I hate automatic software updates...

The Firefox browser on my Linux box has just had an upgrade to 14.0.1. This is all well and good, most is still working, but previously I could use the backspace key to go back a page - not any longer. This is a real PITA when you're skipping back and forth on a forum. Some comedian on a Linux forum said "what's wrong with Alt-left_arrow?" when answering a similar question - well, that takes 2 fingers, one on each hand, whereas it used to take 1 finger, 1 hand. Doesn't sound much, but it's annoying after a while.

So my question is - is there some configuration item I can change in FF that would allow me to work the old way? In about:config, for example?

coyoteboy - 18/7/12 at 02:35 PM

Not that I know of. I personally hate the backspace key used to go back, used in haste it can waste entire paragraphs of entered data/text and I find it a bit irritating!

David Jenkins - 18/7/12 at 02:38 PM

quote:
Originally posted by coyoteboy
Not that I know of. I personally hate the backspace key used to go back, used in haste it can waste entire paragraphs of entered data/text and I find it a bit irritating!




Ever tried using the Lazarus data recovery add-on? It's saved me a lot of work in the past.

[Edited on 18/7/12 by David Jenkins]

HowardB - 18/7/12 at 03:09 PM

I didn't know about the <ALT>arrow, learn something new every day,.. Now I will use that instead of looking for the back space, or the clickable buttons

thanks

britishtrident - 18/7/12 at 03:24 PM

Lazerus is brilliant

Pdlewis - 18/7/12 at 04:16 PM

still works on FF on my machine 14.0.1

britishtrident - 18/7/12 at 06:21 PM

These days I find I am using Chrome as much as Firefox I am finding nigggling issues with latest versions of Firefox. I suspect a lot of the Firefox developers are now writing Android apps.

I am falling out of love with the Mint Linux also I found many issues with version 13 and went back to version 11 when I discovered it had DuckDickGo search engine deeply embedded in the Mint version of Firefox.
I am very deeply suspicious of DuckDuckGo although a lot of Google haters on the net think it is white knight come to the rescue I find the search results distorted and it has a faint wiff of MS Bing surrounding it.

David Jenkins - 19/7/12 at 08:18 AM

I've just got an email from Mattijs Riekerk (I don't know if he's a regular on here) that gave me the pointer I needed to fix this issue:

If you type about:config into the FF address bar you'll get all of the internal settings - you might have to get past a "do you really want to do this?" page first - and search for

browser.backspace_action

Mine was set to a value of 2. If you click on the name you can change the value to 0, which restores the old functionality.

You can a bit more information in this MozillaZine instruction

Thanks Mattijs, I'm happy again!