How to re-enable backspace as back key in Firefox 3.5

Posted on 3 Aug 09 at 10:59 | Tagged as , ,

While Firefox 3.5 has some good improvements, it’s not all good. We geeks are quite disappointed by the decision to disable the backspace key. In previous versions backspace would take you back a page in history. Which is great when you are on the keyboard already — no need to grab the mouse. But in 3.5 this has been disabled.

Fortunately, this is a setting that you can change. Here’s how:

  1. Open a new tab and type about:config in the address bar.
  2. In the Filter search field type backspace — this should bring up the browser.backspace_action preference.
  3. Right-click on the value (defaults to 2) and select Modify.
  4. In the pop-up window change the value to 0 (that’s zero) and accept.
  5. Enjoy your backspace key to go back a page in history again.

For more information see the mozillazine knowledge base page on about:config.

4 comments

  1. Cybertinus on 3 Aug 09 at 11:05:

    Thnx for this blog post. I will surely use this, because this new default behavior is just annoying. Thnx Ben.

  2. Ben de Groot (bendegroot) 's status on Monday, 03-Aug-09 11:23:52 UTC - Identi.ca on 3 Aug 09 at 11:24:

    [...] http://ben.liveforge.org/2009/08/03/backspace-in-firefox-35 [...]

  3. Donnie Berkholz on 3 Aug 09 at 15:42:

    alt+leftarrow works…

  4. Some spammer on 15 Nov 09 at 14:44:

    Fantastic article! Very useful information. I really love it; can I recommend it to my friends?

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