666025 - back/forward buttons share menu and are stuck together; old versions had separate functionality

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 415002

(Firefox :: Toolbars and Customization, enhancement)

Description

[flii (cj)]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.17) Gecko/20110420 Firefox/3.6.17 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.17) Gecko/20110420 Firefox/3.6.17 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

in older versions of firefox, the back button and forward button were two completely separate buttons.  each one had the unique ability to show only the back history and forward history, respectively.

the key broken functionality that i personally encounter are:

1. for people who frequently browse backward and forward multiple pages (think 10 or even 20) at a time, the new (horrible) way of doing this requires right-clicking on back/forward, select the page farthest on the list, right-click again, select the next page farthest on the list, and repeat ad nauseum.  previously, one right click on the back button would let me go backward (or forward) 10 pages with that one right-click.

2. forcing these two buttons next to each other breaks two UI preferences that used to exist.  first, i hardly ever use the forward button at home and prefer to get rid of that button altogether.  secondly, at work i do use both buttons, and i put the refresh button between the back and forward button to visually split them up a little.

both of these were taken care of by an extension called "NoUn Buttons" (no unified buttons), and i was able to upgrade to firefox 3 while still being able to keep existing behavior.  unfortunately the developer of that extension is no longer working on it, and i have looked and asked and looked some more for another way to prevent breaking my UI behavior if i upgrade to ff4 or higher and have found nothing.

can we please get this functionality put back into our browser by default?  this is firefox, not chrome, and it should act like it.  chrome is not what i installed.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. browse to a few pages (let's say 10)
2. go back in history up to 9 pages
3. right click on the back/forward button

Actual Results:  
a list of pages, both behind and ahead of the current page, is displayed.  the cache on both directions is quite small.

Expected Results:  
a list of behind pages if i click on the back button and a list of ahead pages if i click on the forward button.  both lists are a decent length (around 10).

Comment 1

[Ian Nartowicz]

Certainly I can confirm the behaviour.  Enhancement request?  Regression?  Who knows, since what you are asking for is the way it used to work before the two dropdown markers were combined into one.  Since that one dropdown marker is now gone, it is certainly confusing and unnecessary to have a menu combining the back and forward histories.

Perhaps the title should be changed?  The bug seems to be about the combined back/forward history dropdown, but that is not obvious from the title.

Comment 2

[[e-mail]]

I too do not wish to upgrade beyond FF3, in fact I didn't upgrade to 3 until I found the no-un extension.  The worst thing is the bizarre combination of the forward and backward cue into one list with no clear way of knowing which is which.  I may have browsed forward a few pages, but I know I want to go back x number to the page I was originally reading, this is quick and easy with the list to choose from, going straight to that page, rather than having to hit back x number of times and waste cycles while those pages attempt to load.

Please give us back a sensible way of browsing.  The combined button is pointless, unintuitive, bad design.

Comment 3

[[e-mail]]

I agree, the "unified" back/forward button and the unified back/forward history have been a big disappointment.  This was a bad idea when Internet Explorer changed to a unified history, and it was an even worse idea for Mozilla to copy it from Internet Explorer.  I thought the whole idea behind Firefox was to do something better than IE, not to duplicate it.

The fact that this strange feature inspired someone to create an extension to correct it should have told Mozilla that this was an unpopular change.  This feature should be returned to the FF3 design.

Comment 4

[Marco Bonardo [:mak] (Away Apr 25 - May 5)]

The fact somebody creates an add-on just underlines how nice is Firefox in allowing each user to customize stuff as he wishes. The fact you don't like a change, doesn't make it a bad idea, just makes you wishing to use the add-on. The feature itself is rarely used by Firefox users, if you're interested in what is popular and what is not.

Comment 5

[Vlad [QA]]

Considering comment4, can this be closed?
thanks

Comment 6

[[e-mail]]

(In reply to comment #5)
> Considering comment4, can this be closed?
> thanks

I don't see how comment 4 suggests this should be closed at all.  1) it makes a totally spurious statement about how much a feature is used, with no evidence to back up the remark. 2) because an add on existed which provided a work-around for the problem, users who preferred the earlier behaviour could put up with the problem -- now that that add on is not going to be supported in FF4, it is preventing those users from upgrading as they don't want to lose that functionality.  3) what is unfathomable is that the request should be easy enough to act upon, the FF keeps track of the browser history in both directions, it is merely a case of allowing the two original style buttons to be in the toolbar palette.

From a purely ergonomic point of view the unified buttons are poor design, pure and simple.  You can't take away a useful feature, and then say that nobody used it, you can't use what you can't have.

Comment 7

[gop360]

The unified button is extremely confusing to me, as I am slightly dyslexic. I am used to the topmost item in each button being the most recent either forward or backwards. When I click on it now, I really can't tell where I am. Is it the same menu regardless of backwards or forwards being clicked? I can't use Firefox anymore because of this. I feel like a cruel joke is being played on me, from an accessibility standpoint. :(