Backspace Rethought

Backspace, often used, rarely considered. As keyboards replaced cursive, backspace replaced erasers and whiteout. As touchscreens replace keyboards, backspace has remained unquestioned and unchanged.

Drag gives the precision and control of tap with the speed of hold. All the benefits with none of the trade offs.

As for selecting multiple lines of text, the idea was you could move the backspace key up to the second and third row of keys to select a second or third row of text in the input field.

Idea I mocked up in 2014, but never published. Afterwards I discovered similar ideas were out there, but not quite like this. Apple have since implemented a drag function to control the cursor.