I have a hard time as well since this change was introduced navigating through kickoff. I think the breadcrumb might be nice for orientation, but being able to simply throw the cursor to the left side of the screen is way easier than having to actually look and aim for the tiny breadcrumb item.
It would be nice to get the old behavior back. Having both, breadcrumb and large hit area would be neat.

Also you can’t just hit backspace to go back one level, arrow keys just switch the tabs but dunno how to go up one category in applications menu

*** Bug 279626 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

It is a really bad practice to mark something as WONTFIX without giving any reasoning. This gives the impression of someone exercising a god complex - "You just have to do what I say and I am not accountable to anyone".

Of course, this is not what has really happened here? There is a sound reason why this has been marked as WONTFIX, the person just forgot to give the rationale, right?

So why not add it and let us know the studies and UX foundation that has led to this conclusion?

Lol. You don't honestly believe Plasma developers actually have studies?! Or care about usability? If they would, Plasma could actually become usable :) But a bug report isn't the right place for a principled discussion ^^

I wonder why people love all the time some other product's behavior, like the Application Launcher Style similar to Windows, and when they create something new, like this button here, they fear it and remove it.
I do think it is useful this button.
I do think it is cool too.
I do think it is ergonomic and useful.

Please put it back, as long it is already implemented in previous versions and works.
I use KDE because I like its concept more than Window's, i love its plasmoids concept as pluggable little things giving to OS' GUI such flexibility. I've used these since Karamba was created :)

I hope you reconsider the decision.

*** Bug 280601 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** This bug has been confirmed by popular vote. ***

This really should at least be a checkbox in the options for the KDE launcher. I miss this feature as well and end up opening programs I don't intend to because I assumed the back arrow was still present.

I reverted to Kickoff from 4.6 which works perfectly :)
Just checkout the 4.6 branch of Plasma and build the kickoff menu, it will replace the 4.7 one, add it to your panel and all set :)

Thank you so much! You are a hero :)
So, will we have both, the button and the breadcrumb?

No, I mean, you could just check out the code from the 4.6 branch, compiel it and use it, so you literally use Kickoff from KDE 4.6

Why was this marked WONTFIX?

bump!

Really, guys, why you don't whant to bring button back? Ugly, tiny, hard-to-see breadcrumbs is not a thing that we love in KDE.

Gnome becomes ugly and hard to use and it's not a case to do same with KDE.

Hope you'll bring our sweet back button back)

*** Bug 285401 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

It's very pity that Plasma developers don't even find it possible to comment the decision to remove 'Back' button from Kickoff. It's just silently closed as WONTFIX and that's all. Without any comments this decision looks pointless and definitely ruin the efforts on community and persistent user base building.

That no developer so far has not commented on it is unfortunate, but I think it was not closed silently. @Kai: is it possible that you discussed it on IRC? I remember that there were discussions though I could not find anything in the logs.

Nevertheless I want to provide the asked info: please have a look at the following mailing list thread: http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/plasma-devel/2011-December/018184.html

Thanks, Martin. This is actually the very first comment on that subject I heard.

Very interesting discussion in plasma-devel but I personally didn't find any arguments why the 'Back' button is bad but something like "We decided to remove this button and would never revert it. Period." I think, this subject just needs to be analyzed some more than already done in constructive way as it is in the plasma-devel branch now. I agree that it's not possible to satisfy all users but I think you could try to satisfy most part of users if it's not so difficult to do.

Here is an idea:

A lot of things in KDE can be changed/fixed by using plugins. Would it be possible to add this button back by using a plugin? The code for the button already exists in the older branch, all we need is someone with coding skills to turn that into a plugin that we all can install...

> Very interesting discussion in plasma-devel but I personally didn't find any
> arguments why the 'Back' button is bad but something like "We decided to
> remove this button and would never revert it. Period."
Being bluntly: The option to revert does not exist. We changed to breadcrumbs 
in 4.7, 4.8 is going to be tagged as RC tomorrow, so it is impossible to do 
any changes and reverting in 4.9 is clearly no option any more. Too many users 
got used to the new style, so what do we gain by breaking the workflow?

So we do not need to discuss whether the back button is bad. The only thing 
which can be discussed is whether the back button is so important that it 
needs a config option and that it is worth the amount of work to add and more 
important to maintain it.

For me there has not been any convincing argument that it needs an option 
which means that currently I will not add it and would not even accept a 
patch.

Please keep discussions to one place and that's the mailing list thread.

Yes, you're right, it's better to keep the whole discussion in the mailing-list. I'll answer you there.

Actually, this is exactly the kind of attitude that gives open source a bad name. This whole problem started with a bad decision of removing a well functioning feature and replacing it with something that is less userfriendly. And with no foundation or discussion whatsoever.

This is what makes me shake my head in disbelief. Just give us an option to turn it on if we want it. I, for one, will turn it on immediately. Anywhere I see a breadcrumb, I use it for what it is intended for - navigation ASSISTANCE. Not for navigation. Clicking on that tiny target is much harder than hitting the back button.

And for the discussion on the list - for those of you that are on the list, please take the arguments there. A lot of people that have good arguments about this case are not on the list as they are not programmers.

Maybe it would be a good idea to add this to the brainstorming part of the KDE forum and get a feel for how many of the forum users that want to see this button back.

It is not an argument FOR the breadcrumb that so many people are now used to the new way. Duh! Nobody has an alternative! This does not mean we would not like to use the back button if it was available.

Martin, can you at least then make your QML version mouse back button aware?

Quite agree with Oceanwatcher, this kind of attitude is the biggest question for me..
I think it's good idea to know the real users response. There's some technical discussion in the mailing-list but there's really no place to express users' position except this report.

Please stop discussing in this bug report. It won't help you except to 
annoy me which make your chances of me allowing to get it in even lower. 
If there are any further comments trying to discuss this issue, I will 
contact the Community Working Group to get this bug read only. Thanks 
for your understanding and not wasting my time.

(In reply to comment #23)
> Martin, can you at least then make your QML version mouse back button aware?

I'll answer on behalf of the KDE team: This seems like a good idea, because it DOESN'T create a spaghetti of alternate code paths through the GUI. We'll look into this possibility with the KDE 4.9 version of Kickoff. I've written and Assigned bug 289519 to myself, for tracking that Enhancement.

But THIS bug is done, rejected for very good reasons. Please respect KDE's management methods; bugs.kde.org is NOT a place for whining about a decision which is done. (If you want to do that, Please do it on your own Blog.) If you've got an issue with this, please speak with me personally- the email address shown here IS valid, and I will answer.

Thanks for reading! I think that we probably can give you "Back" mouse-button functionality in 4.9. (I can't say for sure, because Qt5 isn't yet stable.)

> 4.8 is going to be tagged as RC tomorrow, so it is impossible to do any changes

Reverting in 4.8 is very much possible, because this would not be a new feature, but restoring existing code tested for months.

(In reply to comment #27)
> Reverting in 4.8 is very much possible, because this would not be a new
> feature, but restoring existing code tested for months.

Kevin, the layout was changed in 4.7 - by a great deal. In the current code, this would be a "new feature", even though it restores *functionality* which existed in 4.6. and earlier. We can't get it by 'restoring existing code', we'd have to write new code to fit with the breadcrumbs design.

In a word: I agree, this would be restoring lost functionality if the program GUI in question HAD NOT changed in a fundamental way. But it did. Kickoff has been lacking the button for almost a year (i.e., 4.7 AND 4.8). I wish that the Bug had been handled when it was first opened. But the scope and long-existing  incompatibility of the legacy 4.6 code now makes it a de-facto 'feature', and not a mere 'bugfix'.

I'm moving on to the Mouse Button shortcuts, as the easy "mouse-only" implementation. 'Back' already exists as a standard keyboard shortcut in Qt (implemented in KDE as both the backspace key, and as Alt-LeftArrow). I'll be pre-defining a "click" of Qt::BackButton to perform the same shortcut.

(BTW, I feel that anyone who really cares about the having the feature needs to be willing to spend at least $7 USD for a suitable mouse. E.g.,
http://www.ebay.com/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110703618276&category=23160

Back and Forward Buttons are a well-understood standard; Qt and KDE have been somewhat backward [respectively] in providing and then using a suitable API for these buttons, as well as other buttons present on widely used "gamer mice".)

*** Bug 296007 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Because of the large number of votes, I will try to accomplish the mouse-based "Back Button" in 4.8.x (as well as the QML version in 4.9).

*** Bug 297828 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

In 4.8.3, the mouse button will "pop" the GUI Display back (to the Parent item, if one exists.

This is not a "Back Button" in the fullest sense. but it is faster than traversing/scrolling into the Breadcrumb. Ref: https://codereview.qt-project.org/#change,25412

*** Bug 304842 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 318304 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***