Implement short swipe in browser to return to previous page

Design
1

I’ve received my Jolla phone a couple days ago and overall I’m very pleased with it, I used to run SailfishOS on an Xperia 10 in the past so I was already used to the way Sailfish OS interface works.
While getting to know my new phone, I’ve been browsing some websites in the integrated browser and found that a short swipe left to right does nothing; the only way to navigate back to the previous page is to use the arrow in the bottom bar.
As a user I’m already accustomed to use the short swipe returning to a previous screen (i.e. while navigating settings) and I find counterintuitive to not have the same UX in a core application like the browser, my muscle memory kicks in and I keep swiping before remembering I have to use the button instead.

Unfortunately this might cause some issues with websites displayed in desktop more (where horizontal scrolling might be required), so I would suggest the following options:

  1. make the swipe gesture to return back to one page only available when a website is displayed in “mobile-friendly mode”
  2. make the swipe gesture to return back to one page available both in “mobile-friendly mode” and “desktop mode”; while in “desktop mode” implement a different gesture (i.e. tap, hold, and then move the finger around) to pan across the page
7 Likes
2

Would the “browser history swipe” patchmanager patch do what you want?

1 Like
3

The neatest idea i read was swiping in the address bar to move Bwd/Fwd. It doesn’t interfere with the rest of the gestures.

1 Like
4

Which would completely interfere with

And swiping inside the browser windows is desktop-mode moving as well as mobile-mode zoomed-in moving, so I am sure not a good idea (or confusing). But…

5

@ohnonot I am not familiar with patchmanager but will check it out, thanks!

@peterleinchen you have a fair point: changes in UX are always hard if they start altering behaviors which have been present for a very long time. Personally, I’d even be happy to have a browser setting to let me choose the default behavior of a short swipe in the browser app. That said, I will have a look at the suggestion of patchmanager and see if that achieves what I’m looking for.

Thank you all for the replies so far.

6

Well you cant have everything. Priorities need to be set. Ie what is the most common use case.