This blog post is the third part in a series on web application usability. As stated in the first post, users will get frustrated and stop using an application if it is not easy to use. In this series of blog posts some examples are given on improving the usability of web applications. These examples also hold for ‘normal’ websites, but are specifically important for web applications. In this specific blog post the topic is the back button.

Back button
The back button is the second-most used navigation feature on the web (the most-frequently used is following hypertext links). Users know that they can try any link on a webpage with the certainty to get back to familiar terrain by one or two clicks on the back button. The back button therefore enables a website visitor to ‘explore’ the website. In traditional software applications the ‘undo’ command serves this purpose. It has been a strict design guideline to include an ‘undo’ functionality in software applications. So it is important that the functionality of the back button works in web applications.

The two screenshots on the right give a good example of how the function of the back button is broken in a (flash) web application. In the first screenshot the starting point is displayed. In the second screenshot the color of the shirt is changed. Unfortunately it is not possible to undo the color change (note that the back button is not clickable). On the upper right in the application there is a reset button but that resets everything. In the present tool it is not possible to undo the latest change. It would be possible to build in an undo button within the application, but since it is a web application users expect the back button to have that function.

Next up in the series ‘Usability in web applications’ is standard usability guidelines.