Comments on: Firefox 3 – Back Button UI Annoyance

By: Linda Lee

Linda Lee — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 17:31:38 +0000

This was really bugging me. It seems every time they upgrade I have to spend days tracking down the plugins I use for newer versions,( and no, they are not always on the auto update yet.) I had to reset my url bar settings again and of course I have to re-opt out of the ad networks. I hate upgrading.
Thanks for telling me this, I never even tried the forward arrow, since gee, I was trying to go backwards like I am used too doing..

By: deeyhaw

deeyhaw — Tue, 05 May 2009 08:05:19 +0000

See NoUn Buttons addon:
Link
You can place dropdowns where you want…
Doesn’t work with any theme, but does with most…

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 17:39:44 +0000

Man, this is stupid.

They should have at least made the “history drop down” another toolbar object. amirite?!!11

By: Dan

Dan — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 21:16:04 +0000

It’s a terrible design and very annoying. With the old method, if you wanted to go back two pages, you select the second item below the back button. Now you need to click on the dropdown, find the dot, and then click on the second item below the dot (or is it above?).

I continue to stick with SeaMonkey, from which Firefox is a fork. The drivers for Firefox love to say that everything can be fixed in a plugin and it doesn’t belong in the browser, but installing insecure plugins is a risk, even if you can find just the one you want (I can’t find any that fix this problem).

By: Zacq

Zacq — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 22:40:47 +0000

I like the idea, but it should be an larger button between the two to indicate that this is a new fancy thingy, correctly placed chronologically. That’s intuition to me.

BTW right-clicking the back-button shows the history as well. I’m using it in the transition period and it doesn’t “cost” more mouse clicks.

By: Greg Tommers

Greg Tommers — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 23:56:24 +0000

Yes, this is a bad UI decision. Reminds me of the Microsoft menus that constantly reorder (and truncate) based on which operations you do most often. Consistency is important in UI design and not having an intuitive forward/backward is a large mistake.

By: Bill

Bill — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 20:13:21 +0000

Ditto, I hate this. It’s bad UI.

By: The Blog of Harald » firefox 3 back button

The Blog of Harald » firefox 3 back button — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 22:58:21 +0000

[...] extremely annoying! This finally bothered me enough that I performed a Google search, and found Firefox 3 – Back Button UI Annoyance which explains that that little arrow next to the Forward button is actually a history menu for [...]

By: Vic

Vic — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:25:19 +0000

A work around extension is available – NoUn button. It almost restores the FF2 operation – instead of holding the mouse on the back/forward button to get the drop down list, it adds another drop down to the left of the back button which you have to click on.
But at least its intuitive (to me at least).

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7056

A disadvantage is that it reportedly only runs on Windoze.

By: Rorge Retson

Rorge Retson — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 12:08:29 +0000

The new way is stupid, non-intiutive, and a load of bullocks. The FF 3.0 “fix” smacks of Microsoft in that there was a fix for a problem that never existed. It’s like “here’s your new car…it only has three wheels now, but you’ll get used to it.”