‘Go Back One Site’ Browser Navigation Idea

“The Back button is the most used-used feature of web browsers.”

Steve Krug

‘Don’t Make Me Think’

While browsing the web, I naturally move from one site to another… And often-times get carried away or dive too deep. :)

Probably, it’d be nice to have a quick way of going back to the previous site rather than previous page. To to do that now, you would have to right-click the ‘Back’ button and choose the site, often from a longer list that doesn’t always have favicons in it.

You have to right-click the 'Back' button in Firefox to get to the previous site quicker.

My idea is adding a ‘Back one site‘ button that would let user go to the previous site (domain) in a single pretty obvious click.

I'd add a button that would take me to the previous site rather than previous page.

I guess browser developers had similar idea, but never implemented it. Were they afraid of cluttering and making the interface more complex? It’d be interesting to find that out.

The idea sure needs some testing and polishing, but I believe it’d save some time and nerve for many users.

Edit:

Opera has been having a similar feature for quite a while now. It has a different logic though:

Suppose that you have a browsing history like the following:
1. www.opera.com
2. www.opera.com/about
3. www.opera.com/download
4. www.opera.com/mini
5. widgets.opera.com
6. widgets.opera.com/yetanthetclock42
7. widgets.opera.com/yetanthetclock43
8. widgets.opera.com/yetanthetclock44
9. mini.opera.com

Rewinding will then take you back through the URLs that are emphasized in the above list.

Edit 2:

There’s a Frefox extension that does exactly what I wanted: http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/_rewindforward.html.en

Thanks to Frans for the tip.

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