Changing backspace key action in Mozilla Firefox

In any browser, when you press the backspace key, it takes you back one page in the browser’s history. It is equivalent to clicking the back button in the browser. In the default Mozilla Firefox installation in Ubuntu Linux, the backspace key does not do this. But do not worry, backspace key action can be modified easily.

  1. Open Mozilla Firefox
  2. Type about:config in the address bar and press Enter
  3. Double click on it, to change its value. You can set it to 0, 1 or 2. The values have the following effect :
    • 0 : Pressing backspace will go back a page in the session history.
    • 1 : Pressing backspace will scroll up a page in the current document.
    • 2 : Nothing will happen.
  4. After changing the value as desired, close the tab and you would have backspace key in action as per desired.

By default, Mozilla Firefox in Windows has this value set to 0. On the other hand, in various linux installations including the popular Ubuntu Linux, the default value is 2.