On OS X at least, this looks really good and I haven't found it a bother at all....

kijin · on Jan 30, 2012

when there is no forward-history, the user wouldn't be looking for it

The only way I can tell whether or not I have any forward-history is by checking whether or not the forward button is disabled. If the button is altogether missing, I'm going to wonder for a split second if I did something wrong the last time I tried to customize my toolbar.

Well, I guess I'll get used to it after a few days.

Still, I wonder if there's some usability testing data comparing the lack of a button with a disabled button. A disabled button conveys different information from the lack of a button. Every web browser is trying to be minimalistic these days, but there's got to be a point where any further minimalization hurts usability rather than helping it.

starwed · on Jan 30, 2012

They did some user studies and found that a fair number of folk never use the forward button at all.

Here's one study, not sure if it is the most recent: https://heatmap.mozillalabs.com/

40% of users never touched the forward button even once. And those who did use it, didn't use it very often.

Several of the very low% UI elements (like RSS or Go) were removed completely from the default setup.

hrktb · on Jan 31, 2012

I would just like to point out that your point and the parent's point are both valid and non exclusive.

As a example, one can navigate back and forth by gesture or shortcut keys, and never have to use the back and forth buttons. Still, the display of the buttons to conveys the presence or not of back and forth history can be useful.

kijin · on Jan 31, 2012

You're absolutely right.

Fortunately, this is Firefox we're talking about. I'm sure there will be an about:config option to disable the new behavior if you don't like it. Just like you can change browser.urlbar.trimURLs in Firefox 7+ to restore "http" at the beginning of URLs.

tomflack · on Jan 31, 2012

Even less users use the huge orange FIREFOX button that uses up vertical real estate, but they didn't hide/remove/move that? I see no reason it should be where it is, as big as it is and as bright as it is. Put it where chrome puts it.

zobzu · on Jan 31, 2012

makes more sense to have it where it is. at least its "somewhat" complying to the rest of the ui chrome/IE put it in a relatively arbitrary location.

tomflack · on Jan 31, 2012

I don't understand your reasoning..?

kijin · on Jan 31, 2012

40% of users never touched the forward button even once.

Another way to interpret that data would be "60% of users at least sometimes use the forward button."

The back-forward pair of arrows conveys a very intuitive idea for most people. In the absence of a "forward" button, I wonder how many FF10 users will accidentally click "refresh" thinking that it's the "forward" button. After all, the arrow in the "refresh" button points in the opposite direction of the arrow in the "back" button, and now the two buttons are side by side. It's not difficult to imagine them as a pair. Yeah, one arrow is straight and the other one is curly, but I often think of "forward" as "undo back", and many programs represent undo/redo with curly arrows.

starwed · on Jan 31, 2012

Sure, but the forward button hasn't been removed -- you can still use it, but only when there's actually a forward stack.

I think the ratio of back to forward button uses was something like 100:3 in that study.

(I rarely use either button -- I used to use keyboard shortcuts, and now use a trackpad swipe.)

JoshTriplett · on Jan 31, 2012

The refresh button has moved since that diagram. It, along with the stop button, now lives on the right edge of the location bar, far away from the back button.

kijin · on Jan 31, 2012

Ah, I'd forgotten that. That would invalidate my last point.

IIRC, I moved the refresh button right back to its original location as soon as the change happened, a couple of versions ago.