I've reproed this on both a laptop keyboard, and a USB mac keyboard. Seems like a major bug.

Sadly, the popup is supposed to indicate cmd+left-arrow, but it's confusing because it pops up when you hit backspace so makes you think of the backspace key, which has a left arrow on it on many keyboards. :(

I know Peter and Tyler won't like this...but my preferred solution here would be to just make cmd+backspace actually go back. It would both address this confusion and address some of the concerns people have had about not having the arrow keys in their muscle memory the way they do backspace.

I would prefer not to add a new accelerator here.  I think a better solution would be to replace the arrow with the word "left", which is unambiguous, just less pretty.

Ah, thank you for the clarification. Cmd+Left does indeed go back. (I had previously tried Alt+Left after seeing it mentioned on the internet, which also didn't work, so I guess that's Windows-only?)

The popup has stopped displaying for me now, so I can't check what the icon looked like, but it certainly didn't make me think of a left arrow key, probably for the reason you described.

I'd have a strong preference for adding Cmd+Backspace. It's pretty ingrained into me as a shortcut because that's how you delete files in Finder, and it's a fairly natural motion. Cmd+Left arrow is more awkward and conflicts with text area shortcuts (cmd+left/right is used as home/end on these reduced keyboards) - in particular that means it doesn't work if the nav bar is focussed or any site's automatically-focussing search box. Not a regression since that was already a problem with backspace, but seems like this would be a nice time to solve that problem too.

"Delete file" and "go back" aren't really related concepts, so that semantic overlap is, if anything, more of an argument against adding this than for it IMO.

I agree that cmd-left is not a great shortcut, but I'm really resistant to adding new shortcuts for existing functionality when we're 20 years on.  Isn't there a trackpad gesture for back/forward as well, like two-finger drag left and right?

> Isn't there a trackpad gesture for back/forward as well, like two-finger drag left and right?

Yes but I (and many others I know) turn it off because it's far too easy to trigger it accidentally, even when configured to require 3 fingers (particularly when scrolling the page or dragging items). It's probably used more by people with the magic mouse, since scrolling on that uses only 1 finger.

If nothing else, could you consider using Alt+Left to match Windows? It actually feels less awkward to use that combination, and would reduce confusion since most internet sites talk about Alt+Left already. Of course, I'd personally still prefer Cmd+Backspace.

I'm with Peter here, I don't think we should be adding new shortcuts. Cmd+Backspace is also used by text editing tools and the OS. Comment #3 seems like the right course of action to me. 

 Issue 632671  has been merged into this issue.

I would perhaps be OK with adding alt-left as an alias on Mac, in the name of consistency with Windows, since it seems unlikely that's going to run into conflicts.  (It's weird for a Windows and Mac shortcut to be alt vs. cmd, instead of ctrl vs. cmd.)

But I'm not sure whether I'd change the UI here to promote the alt-left shortcut instead of the cmd-based one.  For example, if other browsers support cmd-left but not alt-left, the cmd-left shortcut would maybe be "more mac standard".

The right time to decide all this is now, if I have to touch the UI here anyway.  Tyler, do you have thoughts on this?

Alt+Left jumps back a word while editing text. Removing Backspace as a navigational shortcut was intended to remove the ambiguity between text editing and navigation. Reintroducing this ambiguity seems strange. There are already two platform-standard shortcut keys (Cmd+[ and Cmd+Left). Mac users would be surprised if Alt+Left were given a non-standard behavior, especially one with the same problem that Backspace had.

Good argument, though per comment 4, cmd-left also conflicts with text editing shortcuts.

I forgot about cmd-[.  Having two shortcuts already is enough for me to avoid adding a third.

Now I'm wondering if we should promote cmd-[ instead of cmd-left.  It's probably a bit easier for touch typists to use, and less likely to conflict with editing shortcuts, but it's also way less memorable.

Well, now that I know about cmd+[, that's good enough for me. It's almost the same gesture as cmd+backspace anyway, and even works when text fields are focussed (a big plus). I'd suggest that promoting it would make the most sense, especially if Cmd+Left is mostly there for compatibility with other browsers (i.e. the people who are likely to use it don't need to be told it exists).

It also has the advantage of not needing the ambiguous left/backspace symbol.

pkasting: Yeah, I think promoting cmd-[ would be better. It's unfortunate we even have cmd-left given that it conflicts with editing shortcuts. FWIW, Safari supports both of these, but only promotes the cmd+[ variant in the OS menus.

OK.  I can change Mac to promote cmd-[.  That might not require a string change either, though I don't know.

Although I forgot, that wouldn't fix Windows.  Probably want to change that anyway.

Promoting ⌘[ sounds good.

pkasting@ - please add me as a reviewer of your cl so that I can check out your change before you land it.

 Issue 639820  has been merged into this issue.

 Issue 642766  has been merged into this issue.

The following revision refers to this bug:
  https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/00d3a368e97975b82f4dc4f483f6e8c6e85331c0

commit 00d3a368e97975b82f4dc4f483f6e8c6e85331c0
Author: pkasting <pkasting@chromium.org>
Date: Tue Dec 20 08:12:57 2016

Use standardized accelerator-to-shortcut code for new backspace shortcut UI.

This changes the left and right arrow symbols into text (e.g. "left arrow"),
reducing ambiguity.  It also promotes cmd-[ over cmd-left on Mac.

BUG= 637547 
TEST=On a new profile, have a page in your "back" session history, then hit backspace twice while outside a textfield to trigger the "Use alt-left to go back" UI.  It should say "Left arrow" instead of "<-".

Review-Url: https://codereview.chromium.org/2540523003
Cr-Commit-Position: refs/heads/master@{#439747}

[modify] https://crrev.com/00d3a368e97975b82f4dc4f483f6e8c6e85331c0/chrome/app/generated_resources.grd
[modify] https://crrev.com/00d3a368e97975b82f4dc4f483f6e8c6e85331c0/chrome/browser/ui/views/new_back_shortcut_bubble.cc

Your change meets the bar and is auto-approved for M56 (branch: 2924)

The following revision refers to this bug:
  https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/7f18e530baf0f121b54634b39ddec536715a8a79

commit 7f18e530baf0f121b54634b39ddec536715a8a79
Author: Peter Kasting <pkasting@chromium.org>
Date: Thu Dec 22 00:42:37 2016

Use standardized accelerator-to-shortcut code for new backspace shortcut UI.

This changes the left and right arrow symbols into text (e.g. "left arrow"),
reducing ambiguity.  It also promotes cmd-[ over cmd-left on Mac.

BUG= 637547 
TEST=On a new profile, have a page in your "back" session history, then hit backspace twice while outside a textfield to trigger the "Use alt-left to go back" UI.  It should say "Left arrow" instead of "<-".

Review-Url: https://codereview.chromium.org/2540523003
Cr-Commit-Position: refs/heads/master@{#439747}
(cherry picked from commit 00d3a368e97975b82f4dc4f483f6e8c6e85331c0)

Review-Url: https://codereview.chromium.org/2596083003 .
Cr-Commit-Position: refs/branch-heads/2924@{#593}
Cr-Branched-From: 3a87aecc31cd1ffe751dd72c04e5a96a1fc8108a-refs/heads/master@{#433059}

[modify] https://crrev.com/7f18e530baf0f121b54634b39ddec536715a8a79/chrome/app/generated_resources.grd
[modify] https://crrev.com/7f18e530baf0f121b54634b39ddec536715a8a79/chrome/browser/ui/views/new_back_shortcut_bubble.cc

Tested the issue on Mac 10.12.1 using chrome version 56.0.2924.51.Observed "cmd-[ " when pressed backspace(delete) twice.Able to navigate to previous page with cmd+[.
Please find the attached screen cast for the same.

Adding TE-Verified labels.

Deleted: 637547.mp4 839 KB

	637547.mp4 839 KB View Download