Tip of the day: Move back to the last page

Ed Bott Firefox, Tips, Windows May 17, 2005 1 Minute

Your hands are on the keyboard and you want to quickly return to the previous page you were viewing in your browser window. Don’t move your hand to the mouse – just press the Backspace key, which has the same effect as clicking the Back button on your browser’s toolbar. (This tip works in both Internet Explorer and Firefox.)

Published by Ed Bott

Tech journalist. Author of 25+ books. ZDNET Contributing Editor since 2006. Contact info: https://edbott.com/contact-me/ View all posts by Ed Bott

Published May 17, 2005

4 thoughts on “Tip of the day: Move back to the last page”

Jason Looney says:

May 17, 2005 at 8:37 am

Also handy is Alt + Left Arrow (to move backward) and Alt + Right Arrow (to move forward).
Bill Godfrey says:

May 17, 2005 at 2:34 pm

And I wish it wouldn’t. On my laptop, the backspace key is right next to the page-down key.

Anyone know how to stop this?
Phil Minor says:

October 26, 2005 at 12:24 am

Yes, the backspace = back button is yet another example of software trying to guess what we want it to do. What happened to the good ‘ole days when it did only what we told it to?
Annoyed by Backspace says:

April 17, 2006 at 9:42 am

This “Feature” is quite annoying. Occasionally I have been completing a form on a web page, and needed to correct a typo, and when I press Backspace, IE takes me to the previous page instead of erasing the text on the form. This must be a bug in IE as it is not consistent. Jason’s suggestion of using the Alt + Left arrow should be the Only keyboard shortcut to go Back.