This came up last week as my friends and I were complaining about Facebook's latest changes. However, this isn't specifically a Facebook issue—it can happen on other websites as well, depending on how they're coded.

Sometimes when you click on a link, and then click the Back button, it doesn't take you back to the same spot you were on before. So, for example, if a friend posts a photo on Facebook and you click to look at it, when you go back, you're taken back to the top of the page and have to scroll through multiple screens to get back to where you were.

In some cases, you might be in the same place but something you set on the first page has defaulted back to its original setting. For example, if you had changed the sort order of a list, or entered information into a form field, that info could be gone.

To avoid this, instead of clicking normally on the link, right-click on it. A menu will pop up that lets you open the link in a new tab (if your browser doesn't have tabs, you can open it in a new window). Then, when you close that tab, you'll be in exactly the same spot you were when you clicked.

One of my friends mentioned she's on a Mac, so doesn't have a right-click option. (One of the reasons I never liked Macs...) but you can still access the right-click menu—also known as a contextual menu, because the options will change depending on what you right-click on—by holding down the Command key or the Ctrl key when you click the link. (I'm not sure if both work or whether it's one or the other depending on your system.) And if that gets to be too cumbersome, you can also get two-button mouses (mice?) for Macs now. I recently gave a wireless mouse to a Windows-using friend who was temporarily working on a Mac and it worked just fine.

Posted in Browsers,Facebook,Firefox,How To,Internet Explorer,QuickTips