Comment 39 for bug 60995

Hmm, hopefully I'm not being too much of a hypocrite for saying this, but please only comment on this bug if you have something meaningful to add. The name calling and "me too" posts aren't entirely helpful. If you agree, then the best way to show it is by voting for the bug.

Now, in response to Robert O'Callahan, I too must wonder what kind of data loss is possible when using the backspace key to go back, and why this is acceptable for Windows or Mac users. I'm not so afraid of change to suggest that keyboard shortcuts should *never* change--if there is a reasonable argument for changing them--however I do think that consistency across platforms is important.

I realise this shouldn't be a political discussion, but I must say that I don't think Firefox should be directed by GNOME at all, since it is a GTK application, not GNOME, and many people run it under KDE, XFCE, etc. My understanding is that GNOME adopted the Backspace-as-PageUp stance from the EMACS people who were used to this, and this is great, and it makes sense for them. The problem is that most Firefox users, even on Linux, aren't EMACS users any more. Also, is there not a GTK setting to switch all the key-bindings over to EMACS-emulation mode? And thirdly, there is a Firefox config setting to change the behaviour of the backspace key. So with all these things, the minority of users who want to change the backspace functionality can easily do so, and like I said, a particular Linux distribution is free to ship that as the default as well.

Also, for anyone reading this who hasn't found the interim solution to this problem, just set browser.backspace_action=1 in your about:config or user.js, and backspace will navigate back as always.