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| Redefining The Browser's Back Button |
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posted by Editor on Tuesday February 04, @07:21PM
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This article in Nature describes a project at the University of Canterbury (NZ) in which browser history was redefined to record every page in the order it was visited. The research team modified web browsers so that their "Back" button, which accounts for 40% of all clicks online, was based on the order of pages visited instead of their hierarchy. A group of web surfers was then given old and new browsers without being told about difference, and asked to perform various navigational tasks. On average, the two systems worked about equally well. This doesn't sound like a big deal, but it means that basic web navigation methods can be redefined without hopelessly confusing users. The research is described in more detail in this paper (PDF).
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No new comments can be posted.
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The way they describe this was completely confusing. They're saying that the current 'back' button doesn't reveal all of the previously visited websites. For example, if I went to
amazon.com -> books -> business section,
then backed out and went to,
amazon.com -> music,
the 'books' and 'business section' is pushed off our Back list, thus history is not preserved. Not to mention that in order to get to 'business section', we'd lose a few brain cells.
I'm not sure if I'm the only neurotic here, but I have a strange behavior of actually liking a clean Back list.:). That is, whenever I surf to 10-15 websites, I'd always go Back all the way to my Homepage, thus keeping my back list short. To me, cleaning a Back list is like putting a book back on it shelf, or shutting a drawer.
As for losing brain cells (from above), if a page seems to hold some information that I may want to retrieve later, I manage through opening of new browser windows. It's not a perfect solution but it does the job 90% of the time. Combined with tabbed browsing, it doesn't clutter things too much.
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by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 05, @12:36PM EST (#2)
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I wish we could get the damn things off the toolbar. At the very least, the caption of the back (and forward) button should be the address it will take you to.
I also wish we could change the "Open in background" in Opera to be the regular click instead of having to go to the context menu. I open in new windows as frequently as I click links to load in the current/same window.
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by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 10, @11:24AM EST (#3)
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Well, since I wrote the parent reply, I've figured out how to edit the IE toolbar. Mine now has only 'stop', 'refresh', and 'home'. I haven't missed the backbutton yet several days.
It does try to keep the 'media' button, but you just have to delete it twice.
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