Google Chrome have fixed a longstanding UI/UX bug and state overload of the Backspace key

Backspace key in Chrome browser no longer navigates backward, but instead is limited to its initial and rightful role: deleting the previous character under the pointer (mouse / text cursor).

I swear by His Noodliness I'd ranted on this at G+ some time, though unfortunately since Microsoft Bing Search isn't available on Google+, I cannot actually find shit in a useful fashion.

That said, I applaud this change, thumb my nose at the fuckwits who are bitching about it, and note again the Flaw of Averages: One Size Fits None.

As to the justification of not relying on Backspace for Navigation

I ordinarily take exception to blame-the-user / taunt-the-user practices, and should hasten to explain my own here.

Learning a New Backward Navigation Method is a Temporary Training Inconvenience.

Repeatedly losing Vast Quantities of Newly Composed Content is an Irrevocable User State Loss.

Among the canons of human-computer interface design is this: Thou shalt not fuck with thine users' State.

Which by definition makes those who fail to make this distinction fuckwits. Perhaps only ignorant fuckwits, a curable state, though quite possibly and regrettably stupid fuckwits, a State of Extreme Durability in my experience.

The larger fault is arguably for the lack of a clear stateful separation of editing from _ browsing_ modes in Web browsers. Editing involves creating novel user state which can be easily lost through capricious client behavior, such as, to draw on a randomly selected example, fucking overloading the backspace key with the behavior of "delete my highly considered and Very Important Message to the Univers by immediately and irrevocably moving off this page.

It's with some irony that I note that console-based Web browsers rarely have this problem. The w3m browser, for example, when editing a text field, dumps the user to a local full-powered editor, and in fact defaults to that one specified by the users environment ($VISUAL, $EDITOR, etc.). The result is that a "primitive" browsing tool actually has an exceptionally powerful editing environment.

(At this point, the Emacs users in the room are of course laughing and pointing at me, but they in fact entirely substantiate my claim in doing so. And, my dear good friends, I've given not inconsiderable thought to actually joining you, as it seems that via Termux, a commandline environment for Android, emacs and all its capabilities are in fact available to me, and may vastly surpass the Android applications environment in capabilities. The fact that Viper is a well-established and long-standing component of the Emacs landscape means that the One True Operating System now does in fact have a useful editor.)

Chrome has other utterly unredeemable failures on Android, including an utter lack of ad-blocking capabilities. But for the task of composing and editing, this is a nice touch.

But it does raise one futher point: why is editing via Web tools so abysmally poor?

Despite various deficiencies, the G+ app actually does favourable compared to a number of other platforms, and virtually all Web editable tools. Reddit and Ello stand out particularly. As much as I love the Reddit Enhancement Suite full-screen editor (it's a browser extension for Firefox and Chrome desktop), it's not available on Android. Meaning I've got to jump through Multiple Divers Hoops in order to compose long-form content on Reddit. Android's various content-creation deficiencies make this a tedious process. This accounts for some of my Diminished Output in recent months.

In particular, Firefox/Android has proven Exceptionally Capable at Losing My Shit, at least in memory not exceptionally distant (considering I've owned my present Samsung[tm] Infernal Device[r] only since October last), a characteristic which makes me Exceptionally Leery of Embarking on Enterprises of Extensive Prose Composition within that context.

Given the, shall we say, exceptional advancement of text-composition in other contexts, I find this particular failure mode of the Browser Development Community in General most unpardonable.

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