916408 - Backspace key may cause to unexpected Back page while Quick Find bar just disappears

Status: NEW

(Toolkit :: Find Toolbar, defect, P5)

Description

[Anthony Kozar]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; rv:16.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/16.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20121024073032

Steps to reproduce:

Turn on "Search for text when I start typing".
Type to search on some page.
Pause too long before deciding to edit the search term.
Hit backspace key (delete key on Mac).



Actual results:

The browser goes back to the previous page in history.
Form data is sometimes lost.


Expected results:

I expected the last character of the Quick Find text box to be deleted, but if the toolbar disappears, then I expect the backspace key to do NOTHING.

I understand from searching this subject that there is a long history/battle over how the backspace key should behave by default.  I want to point out that not only do all of the previous usability arguments against backspace=BACK PAGE apply (and are correct in my opinion) but that there is a serious usability problem with the interaction between the overloaded backspace key and the Quick Find toolbar.

As a Mac user, I have never acquired the habit of hitting the backspace key to go back a page.  I never even knew that was a "standard convention" in browsers until I accidentally discovered it while trying to hit the backspace key in the Quick Find toolbar after it had disappeared (which by the way disappears way too quickly -- much faster than I can think of what to do next ;-)  I have been bitten by this usability problem dozens of times.  And yes, I HAVE lost data that I have typed into a form on more than one occasion, either when using Quick Find or when missing the F11 or F12 key (which are frequently used OS X shortcuts).

Even though I am a software developer, user interface designer, and somewhat "savvy" Firefox user, I did not discover for a couple of years that there was a hidden preference to turn this "feature" off.

Since there is such wide disagreement on this issue, perhaps the best solution would be to provide a preference option in the Firefox Preferences user interface instead of "hiding" the option in about:config.

Comment 1

[Chris Rebert]

Related: bug 1041377