this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
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My friend I've been using the Internet for 27 years and developing for it for most of that time and I can promise you I've never once hit Alt+Left
As your younger and more modern replacement, I use it regularly
You don't sound like ChatGPT
I'm sorry, but as an AI language model, I cannot contradict my instructions to remain hidden while commenting.
Yeah, I have no trouble believing that. It took quite a while before I learned of this shortcut and when I did, I was wondering why I would ever want to use it.
But I generally work from my laptop these days, without an external mouse connected, so reaching from my touchpad, the Left key is right there.
Your reason for using it was exactly my question. "I have a mouse with a built in back button, why would I want to remove my hand from my mouse and navigate with the arrow key?"
But your reason simply makes sense.
You can probably go back by swiping two fingers to the right on the touchpad. Maybe it depends on the OS and browser.
Yeah, that works on my personal laptop, but not yet on my work laptop, because they insist on preinstalling an old, buggy OS. If that did work everywhere, I would probably be using that, but not breaking Alt+Left for whoever needs/wants it, would still be nice. 🫠
Ok, that's unfortunate. But I agree, the browsers default keybindings really shouldn't be broken it's really annoying. I hate it when middle click doesn't work with some web pages. 😒
It really sucks when they break "open link in new tab". I then have follow the stupid link, then middle click the back button to do what they broke.
I have never heard of alt+left, and I've been using the Internet since Mosaic was all the rage. Shame on me, it seems to be implemented in all browsers. How could I have missed it?
It's even implemented in many file managers and text editors and such. Pretty much the standard shortcut for navigating history. But yeah, hilariously it's somehow also a rather well-kept secret.
I started using alt+left when browsers started removing backspace. It was for the best.