What's Next? Let Me Tell Your Browser
Anyone who's spent much time online is probably used to clicking their back button. In fact, years ago I had email exchange with usability guru Jakob Nielsen about the sanctity of the back button.
But how often do you click the forward button? Currently, it's a pretty specialized use case. You can only use the forward button if you've first used the back button, and then only to undo that button's work. In a browser targeted to tech-savvy users you could probably just abandon the button altogether and get people to shift-click on the back button to get the same effect. Mozilla has recognized the lesser importance of the forward button and has made it much smaller than its counterpart.
But what if the page author of a page could specify the next page, and a click of the next button would take you there? On pages of search results a user could quickly scan from page to page at the click of a button or even with their keyboard.
Also, there are a number of times on a site when visitors are meant to move through a linear path. Think of a multi-page shopping cart, a staff directory, or even an "About Us" section that's meant to work like a presentation. Often site developers will develop custom navigation that includes big, obvious "Previous" and "Next" buttons, but they suffer from being inconsistent from site to site, and every browser includes these buttons already. We just need a way to make them work better!
With multitouch devices being used more and more to browse the web, sites with this kind of structure defined could be quickly navigated with a simple gesture. Imagine a two fingered swipe from right to left that would take you to the next page. You could scan several pages of results in a few seconds with your touchscreen phone, tablet computer, or even your Magic Mouse. Heck, people who love those 17-button mice (Steve Jobs, stop reading here) could dedicate a button for this purpose too.
From an accessibility standpoint this should be a big win as well. Screen readers could be configured to help quickly move people from page to page where this kind of linear progression is appropriate.
To be most useful in this context, the "forward" specification should allow for either a web address or a form id that could be triggered for submission (along with whatever validation might exist on the form). Also, we'd want some scripting hooks so that scripts could manipulate the value of the next button, to allow for things like using the next buttons to step through different parts of the same page, or the best destination might change based on a user's activity on that page.
The sad part is that even if we could achieve instant consensus that this would be worthwhile for inclusion in the W3C web standards, we would still be years away from seeing it implemented consistently in browsers and popular sites around the web. We can only hope that some day they'll see the light and help us all move forward.
In the meantime, their are glimmers of hope. A project called Greasmonkey allows users to install scripts that will alter how Firefox works, and one such script, called "Super Next Page", attempts to automatically detect the next page, and enable a keystroke to take you there. Hopefully it's just a taste of a future we can all look forward to.
