so does anyone use the browser nav buttons?

Message

motownFILy · #1 Post by **motownFILy** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 11:48 am

you know, the ones flanking the Up Arrow key.

refer to this post for why this poll is up http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 574#201574

#2 Post by **jdhurst** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 1:29 pm

I use them, and they work, but I don't use them a lot. To me, the ergonomics are obvious. If I am typing, I use the keys rather than reach for the mouse. If I am mousing, then the obverse.
... JD Hurst

whakojacko · #3 Post by **whakojacko** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 9:32 am

well my mouse also has forward and backward buttons, so never if im at home. When im carrying it around, sometimes, but more often than not I forget about their existence

laundromatt · #4 Post by **laundromatt** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 11:13 am

i remapped them to be page up and page down, and use them quite a lot.

chrisnyc · #5 Post by **chrisnyc** » Sun Sep 24, 2006 12:11 am

I use them all the time and have found them very useful. They were not present on my last notebook, which was not a Thinkpad, and I have come to like and appreciate them a lot. In fact, they are one of my favorite features on my Thinkpad, which is a T42 not T60 but I think they are the same on both of these models. They have worked without any problems all along.

christopher_wolf · #6 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Sun Sep 24, 2006 12:49 am

I use them near all the time in Opera, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Explorer in general. When I boot into either BSD or Linux, I have them properly mapped there to work with Firefox.

I usually use the trackpoint and then use the browser keys with my pinky; this makes for file browsing even quicker than I had it before. An *extremely* useful feature, amongst other things.

ramian · #7 Post by **ramian** » Sun Sep 24, 2006 2:32 am

Who needs browser buttons when you've got mouse guestures... Opera just makes browsing so much more efficient. I should serious stop putting off getting Maxthon so that I can use mouse guestures for those sites which require IE as well.

Nonetheless, I do use the buttons on occasion, when my fingers happen to be around the area and I'm needing to go back a page. However, if they were not there, I wouldn't really miss them, unlike the Windows key which I tend to use so much I can't imagine computer life without it... If the browser navigation keys actually worked with the FastForward feature in Opera, I might use it more often though.

gauthier · #8 Post by **gauthier** » Sun Sep 24, 2006 7:32 am

I use them but there is some caveat:

- when writting an email in webmail interface, you can lost your input (depends of the browser and server)
- that's not working like I expect in some applications (outside of web browsers)
- need manual configuration on other systems than windows

Also, I'm pretty used to the alt+left or alt+right wich pretty do the same thing in most browsers.

#9 Post by **jdhurst** » Sun Sep 24, 2006 12:19 pm

gauthier wrote:I use them but there is some caveat:

- when writting an email in webmail interface, you can lost your input (depends of the browser and server)
- that's not working like I expect in some applications (outside of web browsers)
<snip>

The behaviour you note is also true of the forward and back buttons in a browser. On my T41, the keys work the same way as the IE6 buttons. There are no differences that I can see.
... JD Hurst

gauthier · #10 Post by **gauthier** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 7:43 pm

jdhurst wrote:The behaviour you note is also true of the forward and back buttons in a browser. On my T41, the keys work the same way as the IE6 buttons. There are no differences that I can see.
... JD Hurst

the fact is that sometimes (mistake on my side) I stroke nav-back instead of left key (however they have different cap), it occurs more often than say, me pushing the pointer over the browser back button and click without willness to do so.

the issue also occurs with backspace key if the focus is not set on an input textbox.

Most importantly, it can occur when I try to post on bbs such as this one

mmo · #11 Post by **mmo** » Thu Oct 19, 2006 7:25 am

I hate these keys! I always rip them off my machines (my T60p is already my 3rd machine where I do this)!

These stupid buttons make it too simple to accidentally hit the prev. page button and then some webform into which I was typing gets lost. And lots of idiotic webpages reset their content when reloading the page (i.e. when going forward again) and then one has to start all over. It happened too often tome until I decided: these buttons have to go! At least for me...

Michael

#12 Post by **GomJabbar** » Thu Oct 19, 2006 7:39 am

mmo wrote:I hate these keys! I always rip them off my machines (my T60p is already my 3rd machine where I do this)!

Why go to that extreme

Just start Software Installer and choose Uninstall currently installed driver(s) or software, then uninstall ThinkPad web navigation keys agent.

Myself, I use the keys. They are faster than the forward/back buttons on the browser. Useful if you want to back up through several links, or through a several page document, or through multiple pages of search results.

w0qj · #13 Post by **w0qj** » Fri Oct 20, 2006 12:28 am

I remap these to [Delete] & [Enter] instead.

Certainly makes deleting much faster...

period3 · #14 Post by **period3** » Fri Oct 20, 2006 3:29 pm

These keys seem pretty useless. It isn't any harder to hit alt-leftarrow or alt-rightarrow to go backward and forward. They just clutter up the keyboard.

Get rid of those, and the windows key...

motownFILy wrote:you know, the ones flanking the Up Arrow key.

refer to this post for why this poll is up http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 574#201574