I was going to write a post about how much I love the fact that our stuff is clear from customs and will be delivered on Friday, but while trying to do that, I ran back into the … feature … that Firefox has with the delete key and browser history. Why on earth did someone ever think it was a good idea to have the key that DELETES something act as a “back” button. We have perfectly good keys for that (the arrow keys) or other keys that are paired – such as [ and ]. These can handle the concept of forwards and backwards very nicely.

The upshot of this design decision is that if you haven’t paid careful attention to where you last clicked, and you try to erase some text, there’s a very real possibility in Firefox that you’re not going to erase that text, but to go back in your browser’s history to something else. And with today’s sick reliance on AJAX – which breaks the back and forward button anyway – you get very frustrated, very fast. Yet another reason I much prefer Safari to Firefox.

Intelligent design, people. It’s not just for the religious nutjobs.

UPDATE: Yes, I know it can be disabled, but still – why is it the default?