Coming from Windows a few months ago, one of the things I took for granted was the backspace key being a shortcut key for the back button on my web browser – Firefox.
Once I shifted over to Ubuntu, this shortcut was missing from a default installation. If you want to replicate how the Firefox web browser on Windows has mapped the backspace key to go back a page on linux based systems, do the following:
- Open up firefox
- In the address bar, type about:config *this should give you a payload of preferences going down the page*
- Once this happens, enter the word “backspace” in the filter field, this should narrow your entry to one that says browser.backspace_action.
- Double click on the entry and change the value to 0 instead of 1.
The change should be immediate, so if you now press the [Backspace] key, it functions as a back button. I must have done this a several times when I was installing and reinstalling distributions as I messed around with my installations, but kept forgetting how to do it. 
So this is more a quick note than any ground breaking hack.
No related posts.
rob
Bill Karwin
Kevin
James Horne
Martin
Jani Hartikainen
Villar
Walter
David Penner
Diah
Sweet. thanks for that. it was bugging me.
Finally! Why is this not done by default? We don’t need another page up button.
Thanks loads!
You’re welcome guys
glad to have helped out.
thank you very much, was one of the things i was beggining to hate about ubuntu firefox, i just want my firefox to be as fast a windows firefox when viewing hi5 pages, loaded with flash objects
thank you very much
you’re welcome guys, I have the same probs as you with flash carlos, I’ll look it up – there should be a solution somewhere
Thank you both for leaving feedback
quick & helpful, your page, this.
Thanks a bunch – this had been bugging me ever since I switched to Ubuntu!
Wow thanks!!
Despite over 6 months in Ubuntu, I *still* found myself pressing backspace to go back, so this really helps! I still wonder what shortcut people use otherwise… but now it doesn’t matter for me 
fantastic…i missed it very much. thanks!
Thanks! That was really annoying..
Rick
thank YOU !!!!
yes – thank you!!
Thank so much. They still haven’t fixed this in Ubuntu 8.10, at least on my Dell Vostro 1000 laptop.
Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog.
Cheers! Sandra. R.
You’re welcome everyone – I’m glad to see that it’s still helping people almost 2 years later – not sure if it’s still occuring in recent versions tho’ so try to leave your distro info/versions.
There’s a new thing that’s bugging me now tho’ – for some reason, Web Developer toolbar icons seem to disappear. Thought I had it pegged with a recent post, but just then, my icons disappeared again
ahh well… I’ll update the post once I got the issue licked.
Thanks for your feedback!
thanks so much
Awesome.. was bugging the crap out of me.
fabbuluss!!
Man, Thanks so much. This was a major annoyance, which I would just constantly forget to search for over the past year.
You’re welcome guys
This is a default action in Windows I but the Linux default is alt + Left Arrow to match the system default. FYI
Yeah, I know this, but my muscle memory defaults to backspace.
I started using browsers using the windows convention and like little familiar things usability wise “backspace = history.go(-1)”
Also, I don’t want to start using 2 keys when the convention I’m used to uses just the one.
sweet! works likes a charm!