A New Use for the ‘Backspace’ Key

Ed Bott comes through again, with another tip of the day for something simple that I never knew:

Move back to the last page: Your hands are on the keyboard and you want to quickly return to the previous page you were viewing in your browser window. Don't move your hand to the mouse – just press the Backspace key, which has the same effect as clicking the Back button on your browser's toolbar. (This tip works in both Internet Explorer and Firefox.)

Much easier than Alt-Left Arrow. Now, if there were an equally simple replacement for Alt-Right Arrow. And a nicer way to move among tabs in Firefox instead of Ctrl-tab, which I find to be a very awkward key combination.

And — my biggest wish at present — if only there were a tool that would let me search inside the text that I am posting to input boxes on web forms before I actually post it.

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7 Responses to A New Use for the ‘Backspace’ Key

  1. TTop says:

    You can also move between tabs in Firefox with Ctrl-PageUp/Ctrl-PageDown.

  2. george says:

    I dunno about searching inside text boxes (though i’m sure it’s possible) but if you want to create your own shortcuts for firefox, there are plenty of extensions that will let you. can’t speak for ie.

  3. TT says:

    Go Go Gadget Notepad!

  4. paperwight says:

    And on Thinkpads, there’s a page-back key, which does the same thing, and is uncomfortably close to the arrow keys. Of course, when composing on a web-page, when you go back to the prior page, you often lose the composed text. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve lost parts of posts to Typepad. Hmmm… Maybe I’ll go file a bug.

  5. zwichenzug says:

    I hate that shortcut! Every now and then I’m typing something and my cursor gets out of the text box at just about the time I’m ready to hit backspace. Voila, new (old) webpage.

  6. Steven says:

    Opera is pretty good for these features. The “1” and “2” keys cycle among tabbed pages, and the find function searches the text you type into search boxes as well. (I think you can even check spelling, but I never use that feature.)

  7. Eric says:

    Ctrl-1 goes to the first tab
    Ctrl-2 goes to the 2nd, ctrl-3, the third, etc.

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