How can I prevent the backspace key from navigating back?

Question

On IE I can do this with the (terribly non-standard, but working) jQuery

if ($.browser.msie)
    $(document).keydown(function(e) { if (e.keyCode == 8) window.event.keyCode = 0;});

But is it possible to do in a way which works on Firefox, or in a cross-browser way for a bonus?

For the record:

$(document).keydown(function(e) { if (e.keyCode == 8) e.stopPropagation(); });

does nothing.

$(document).keydown(function(e) { if (e.keyCode == 8) e.preventDefault(); });

solves the problem, but renders the backspace key unusable on the page, which is even worse than the original behaviour.

EDIT: The reason I do this is that I'm not creating a simple web page but a large application. It is incredibly annoying to lose 10 minutes of work just because you pressed backspace in the wrong place. The ratio of preventing mistakes vs. annoying users should be way above 1000/1 by preventing the backspace key from navigating back.

EDIT2: I'm not trying to prevent history navigation, just accidents.

Answer 1

Not sure why no-one's just answered this - seems like a perfectly reasonable technical question to ask whether it's possible.

No, I don't think there's a cross-browser way to disable the backspace button. I know it's not enabled by default in FF these days though.

Answer 2

Here is a way to do it in Firefox and IE. However I would highly insist that you don't do this. As the comments state it's generally not a good idea to override default behavior unless it makes sense.

Lets say for example that you wanted to save a copy of this webpage for viewing offline, you pressed Ctrl+S and instead of your browser saving the web page, your browser just closes. How would that make you feel? Probably a little pissed.

Answer 3

Based on the comments it appears you want to stop people losing information in forms, if they press backspace to delete but the field is not focused.

In which case, you want to look at the onunload event handler. Stack Overflow uses it - if you try to leave a page when you've started writing an answer, it pops up a warning.

Answer 4

This code solves the problem, at least in IE and Firefox (haven't tested any other, but I give it a reasonable chance of working if the problem even exists in other browsers).

// Prevent the backspace key from navigating back.
$(document).keydown(function(e) {
    var doPrevent;
    if (e.keyCode == 8) {
        var d = e.srcElement || e.target;
        if (d.tagName.toUpperCase() == 'INPUT' || d.tagName.toUpperCase() == 'TEXTAREA') {
            doPrevent = d.readOnly || d.disabled;
        }
        else
            doPrevent = true;
    }
    else
        doPrevent = false;

    if (doPrevent)
        e.preventDefault();
});