With IE & Netscape for windows you can click on small arrows by the back and forward button that lists the last 10 or so pages browsed, so a similar system exists already.

Scrolling is useful when you can move up, down, left and right at varying speeds within the same content. One pixel at a time, if necessary. Scrolling from one web page to another can never be that smooth, so might as well use the back/forward buttons.

I don't understand Lawrence's conservatism on this topic. I agree that the Back and Forward buttons are good for what they are, and the addition of the quasi-dropdown for jumping multiple steps (in '98? - 6 years ago) is an additional improvement. I do feel that Backslider is a much bigger jump than the quasi-dropdown: What about when you want to go further back? What happens when the Titles of the web pages are poorly differentiated and all the same? Victor already touch on this: click... is this the page I want?... click... is this page the page I want?...

Backslider might or might not be the correct solution to this problem, but some form of VISUAL way to scan through the browser history is neccessary and inevitable. Who knew that we needed Expose before it was introduced in OS 10.4? OS X already had a window manager, but now it was an even better one. I think the same argument holds for Backslider.

Check out the latest ideas on Backslider below. Thanks to Josh for blogging this on his site.

http://everybreathdeathdefying.com/blog/archives/000100.html