Bigger back button extension for Firefox

A little while ago I wrote some CSS that applied Fitt’s Law to make the back button in Firefox bigger.

At the time, someone said I should make it an extension, and I did (based on Chu Yeow’s “making unred tabs obvious” extension), but forgot all about it.

It wasn’t until my Firefox installation got corrupted and I had to do a clean re-install that I realise how utterly vital it is, and I became really glad that I had made it an extension. Jeez – how do people cope with that insanely small back button? It’s crazy!

So, here it is: Install Fitts’ Back Button.

Published by

34 thoughts on “Bigger back button extension for Firefox”

  1. Nice. Have you created a u.m.o developer account and added this there yet?

  2. No, I didn’t even think about it! I suppose I should do really. I’ll put it on my “todo” list. πŸ™‚

    Good to see you back πŸ™‚

  3. I didn’t think this extention would be useful. I use small icons and compact themes which makes everything really small, and when I installed this it only made my overused back button bigger – which is FANTASTIC. Good work.

  4. Yes, I’ll do that very soon. Also, if you enabled comments on your blog, I could point out some errors you’ve made in your post about Linux. πŸ˜‰

  5. Well, if they’re over 10 days old, I only seem to get spam. But if you want to Email me, I’d post them up as a rebuttal…

  6. I’ve just put up a new version. You should just be able to use the normal extension update system to get it, otherwise you’ll have to uninstall it and reinstall.

  7. There is another extension that utilizes Fitt’s law for a similar effect – milewideback.
    The whole left edge of the browser’s window becomes a 1px thin Back button.
    It is sadly not availbable for 1.5

  8. Thanks Leo. Yes, I’d seen it when I came to write this extension and it’s a good use of Fitt’s Law; I tried it for a bit but I think I prefer the back button – otherwise I just forget!

  9. Very nice extension for Firefox! I like it very much, but I’m missing it in FF 1.5.
    When will there be an update, so that the bigger back button will also be availabe in FF 1.5?

  10. Er, it should work in 1.5 already. It may not update itself automatically – I’ve not really tested that part of it very much, but if you just reinstall, it should work.

  11. Great extension – I only have a few extensions on my new laptop and this is one of them!

  12. excellent! that’s really great to hear! it’s always one of the first things I install on a new Firefox installation!

  13. 7/14/2006 – I have just updated to the Beta 2.0 of FF. Will you be updating the bigger Back Button for it? (Sometime soon, I hope.)

  14. Yes, I just updated to FF2 at home, so I will be updating the extension soon.

  15. I found a bug when Colorzilla is enabled. If I goto Customise… my toolbar and then save (even if I don’t make any changes to my toolbar), the menu options File etc. are disabled (greyed out).

    I can’t even get to Customise… by right-clicking on the toolbar as that option is disabled as well. Strange!

    This was in FF 1.5.0.7 at home.

  16. Of course, I mean this here Bigger Back Button extension WITH Colorzilla enabled together is when I get the bug.

  17. Hi, I’ve just updated to the newly released Firefox 2, but your extension isn’t compatible πŸ™

    It’s amazing how much I got used to having a big back button and how much I miss it now!

    Thanks for such a simple but useful extension. I hope you have time to update it soon!

  18. OK, sorry this has taken me so long to get around to. Installing from scratch or updating by hand should both work now, upgrading you to version 0.12 of Fitts’ Back Button.

  19. Version 1.02 still doesn’t work over here. I am using a BonEcho build of Firefox 2.0 with the Firefox (default) theme.

  20. If you uninstall and then reinstall it really should work.

    There’s a possibility of course that you have an older version cached, so you might want to try clearing that out too (that’s been a problem for a couple of people so far already).

  21. How do I do that cache cleaning? I tried to look for it in the Mozilla Knowledge base but am not sure what is the right procedure.

    Deleting the extensions.cache file?

  22. It’s working OK for me… Thanks! I’m running Firefox 2.0 as released on the “Get Firefox” site. Never used a beta version of Firefox.

  23. very useful and I’ve relied on it for quite a while now…why isn’t it available on the main addons page/

  24. Dude, I’ve discovered that this doesn’t work for Mac FF!

    πŸ™

Comments are closed.