Android-like back button

Brainstorm
1

The back button is very useful on mobile phones. While convenient for non-technical everyday users, it also has usability benefits in general, because it’s a less destructive button than the window close button, yet it gives the simple command of abandoning what I’m doing rn. For multitasking usages it is quite rare that I want to close a window anyways.

How could this be implemented? The ideal functionality would be to send a ‘back’ request to the window, and if it doesn’t respond then simply close it anyways.

2

You mean a button in the window decoration / title bar?
Like Minimize/Maximize/Close?

There is likely already a standard even for forward/backward.

I have two additional buttons on the side of my mouse and they do trigger forward and backward, e.g. in a browser.

So any new UI element or finger/mouse gesture could likely just send the same event

3

I guesse he is talking about the close button at the lower right on Plasma mobile :

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I have also a back button on my mouse so and it seem to be a standardised behaviour among linux apps.

Plus the close button on plasma mobile feel dangerous. When I see the current design I always fear to missclick and close the app.

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4

I meant something like that button, but that it sends a ‘back’ event rather than close. I agree it’s dangerous, it was quite weird to see the close button so near a user’s thumb. The one difference would be that this new button would close the window if there’s no back operation enabled.

I think the back/forward mouse buttons are handled by the application as MB4 and MB5. AFAI researched, there’s no such standarized functionality on Linux yet.

5

Since I run quite a few ssb’s with no toolbars, I made me a desktop app which mimics ( in my case) Alt+left ( go back ). It comes in usefull with a couple of apps/modes. Sits on autohidden panel.

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