Prevent BACKSPACE from navigating back with jQuery (Like Google's Homepage)

Question

Notice while on Google\'s homepage, with no focus on any element, pressing BACKSPACE will put the focus into the search toolbar instead of navigating back.

How can I

Answer 1

I would bind an event handler to keydown and prevent the default action of that event if we're dealing with the backspace key outside of a textarea or input:

$(document).on("keydown", function (e) {
    if (e.which === 8 && !$(e.target).is("input, textarea")) {
        e.preventDefault();
    }
});