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Chrome extension restores the backspace key to its former glory
Lots of very smart people work at Google, but that doesn't mean they're immune from making decisions that piss people off. Consider this recent Chrome kerfuffle: some users were recently shocked to discover that, upon updating Chrome, they could no longer tap the backspace key to go back a page. Mild panic, and lots of comments, ensued. If that sounds an awful lot like you, well, you can dial down the anguish a little -- Google released a Chrome extension called Go Back With Backspace that does exactly what its name implies.
Google will stop you hitting backspace in Chrome by mistake
Have you ever filled out a form in Chrome, only to hit the backspace key accidentally? Suddenly you're catapulted to the previous page in your browsing history, losing everything you had just submitted. It's not a deal-breaker, but frustrating all the same. To help, Google is experimenting with a version of Chrome that removes the ability to go "back" with the backspace key. The change was implemented a couple of weeks ago, but seems to be limited to the Canary version of Chrome. Indeed, I was able to replicate the change on Canary (Mac), but not the public channel.
Report: Obsidian considered 'sci-fi Skyrim' RPG Backspace
Obsidian Entertainment once had a sci-fi game in development, built using the Skyrim engine and that game's "Radiant AI" system. Dubbed Backspace, the project was in development at Obsidian in early 2011, Kotaku sources claim. Obsidian boss Feargus Urquhart confirmed the studio could possibly come back to the idea in the future. The Backspace design document describes "simple time travel" and combat similar to Skyrim, "but slightly faster since there is no concept of blocking." It calls for a game that is a mixture between Mass Effect, Borderlands and System Shock 2. Players would navigate between various worlds, linked together by one massive space station. "Backspace was a project concept that we neither cancelled nor greenlit," Urquhart told Kotaku. "We had some great people work on the idea for Backspace for a bit of time and then moved them off to other projects as opportunities came up. We've been around for ten years now and have had a bunch of great ideas that we still have sitting around that we may be able to return to in the future." Obsidian Entertainment has a lot of irons in the fire at the moment, including South Park: The Stick of Truth for publisher Ubisoft and Project Eternity, a Kickstarter campaign that yielded $3.9 million for the development studio to create a PC-only isometric dungeon crawler similar to Baldur's Gate.
