Built into all browsers these days are buttons like FORWARD, BACK, and REFRESH. However, many web developers choose to build navigation components into their sites which ignore this built in functionality. The result is UI bloat. There are multiple back buttons displayed for most users, both those on screen and those on the browser itself. Rather than having content quickly and cleanly delivered, we are faced with all-looking-the-same websites, which are supposedly user-friendly.

Individual users can do things to get rid of browser clutter. However, most people aren't nerds who tweak their browser settings to hide things they don't want (or who set up stuff like vim keybindings for their browser).

Content First

Making use of browser buttons instead of cluttering a UI with your own buttons puts your content first. Navigating your web pages should be non-annoying, but is not the main reason people (should) visit your website. Hopefully you have something useful to offer that pretty menus and spinners.

Peripheral friendliness

One other advantage of making use of normal BACK/FORWARD functionality is that many keyboards and mice (as well as other things, like game controllers) can be set up to access these functions on convenient thumb-buttons and other more ergonomic fixtures. Save your ass expensive medical bills from RSI and stuff and build for the future.

Action plan

I'm going to write many web pages that you have to use your browser navigation to get away from. No need to write another "back" button if you can just press back. No layers of abstraction above normal browser navigation.

Other technical notes

Modern web tech like React piles on some layers of abstraction through things like dynamic routing with tools like React router to implement forward-back functionality in Single Page Applications (SPA). This is understandable for making snappy web pages that feel "modern".

However, if you don't load too many images and other media, keep things clean and simple, etc., web pages don't even take that long to load. This blog, for instance.