657817 - Back Button Slow Left Click===>History List===>2 More Clicks to Go Back

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Toolbars and Customization, defect)

Description

[Mike Piehl]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:2.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:2.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0.1

Until FF 4.0 the Back Button worked fine.  Now with FF 4.0+ Left Clicking the Back Button slowly, ie: depress mouse button for ~>2-300ms and a History List is displayed.  Previously this didn't occur and the release of the mouse button resulted in Back Button execution.  For a slow click, now 2 additional clicks are required to go Back.  This seems to be BAD UI design.
1.  Why dictate the click speed necessary for a user?  When previously the click release was what executed the Back function and the click time could be many seconds.
2. The History List is displayed by Right Clicking the Back Button, having the same function for a slow left click is redundant.

The previous design allows "pre-selection" the left mouse button can be depressed to pre-select the Back function and then when the user is ready the button can be released to go Back.  ==Good Design!

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Happens with FF 4.0
    Happens with FF 4.0.1
    Happens with a new profile.
2.  FF previous to 4.0 was fine ==> 6 years?
3.

Actual Results:  
1. To go back to a previous web page left click slow (try depressing Left mouse button using various times 200-500ms), see History List, click again to get rid of list, click for the 3rd time to go Back.  See how quickly mouse button must be clicked to go Back.

Comment 1

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

did you try:
- while holding left key pressed move mouse down and release on the entry you want
- right click instead

Comment 2

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

Ah but maybe you have the opposite problem, you don't want to see the list.
Do you have to slow press for some personal problem?
I think some extension could exist to restore the old behavior

Comment 3

[Mike Piehl]

Yes, with the Left button I don't want to see the list.  That's what the Right button is for!  How the Left Click is performed should be left to the user, not to some arbitrary design and for no reason.  The Right button is for the History list.

Comment 4

[George Carstoiu]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:7.0a1) Gecko/20110621 Firefox/7.0a1

Adding Faaborg to get an opinion from the UX team.

Comment 5

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

design was intentional to reduce the complexity of primary UI.  people who have slow clicks will need to switch to a faster click and release (or click a few extra times).

Comment 6

[AndreiD[QA]]

(In reply to comment #5)
> design was intentional to reduce the complexity of primary UI.  people who
> have slow clicks will need to switch to a faster click and release (or click
> a few extra times).

Setting this bug's status as resolved since this behavior is intended.

Comment 7

[Mike Piehl]

For some reason, when the user (me) makes a slow click a drop down list occurs (the same list as right-click), but only one additional click is required to go back.  (Previously, three clicks were required.) So it's getting better, but to say "design [bad design] was intentional to reduce the complexity of primary UI" is a bogus reason.  UI should take precedence over "complexity".  Especially when Firefox 3 and earlier didn't exhibit this requirement for a quick back button click.

Comment 8

[Nicolas Barbulesco]

(In reply to comment #7)

> For some reason, when the user (me) makes a slow click a drop down list
> occurs (the same list as right-click), but only one additional click is
> required to go back.  (Previously, three clicks were required.)

Actually, in that situation, with Firefox 5.0 on my Mac OS X 10.6.8, I go back without additional click.
While my mouse is still pressed, I move it to the item below the ticked item, and I drop the mouse.

Nicolas