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Come back Back button, come back
Written By cww on Oct. 15, 2006.
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In the midst of designing a site for a friend recently, there was mention of using a Back button... and though I explained to him that the entire site is accessible from any page, I realized that I actually didn't know off the top of my head how to create a functional Back button.
As someone who only became a "serious" website designer in the past 3 years, I was a bit surprised by the request, and it quickly became obvious to me that thanks to my training in Standards, CSS, etc, I have never ever created a Back button for a website before.
Did the Web Standards movement kill the Back button, or does it still have a place in the world? I can see it still in use when a multi-page article is present, or a photo gallery of some sort... but certainly this isn't the days of yore, when you had an eight-page website, and every page had a big juicy Back button adorning it.
Devin
Written Oct. 15, 2006 / Report /
Maybe I don't understand but doesn't it seem really redundant if we already have a back button built into our browsers?
Josue
Written Oct. 15, 2006 / Report /
javascript go: history -1
the code looks like that :)
blissdev
Written Oct. 15, 2006 / Report /
Sometimes when custom business logic is involved or when there are redirects, a back button is required to put the user where the back button "should" go.
Teej
Written Oct. 16, 2006 / Report /
Josue said:
"javascript go: history -1"
I don't remember the last time I clicked one of these and it actually worked. I don't trust them anymore, so I never click them.
While working with users who are having issues, I usually find that when they see multiple back buttons they get confused. Every browser has a back button, and it works the same exact way. Keep it that way. You don't need to reinvent the wheel, just make sure the current wheel still rolls.
Users never seem to interact with my sites like I expect them. So if I create a back button that assumes they are viewing it in a linear fashion, or assumes that they were veiwing your site before they got to that page, that button will break.
Lazy People Skip To Here
Don't make your own Back button. But don't go breaking the browser's one either.
jgrucza
Written Oct. 16, 2006 / Report /
I use breadcrumbs instead. Well, not real breadcrumbs, since what they're really doing is showing where you are in the hierarchy instead of the path that you've taken to get to that page. But it essentially gives you links to "back".