One thing about Mobile Safari thats always bugged me is that there’s no home button. It’s a common feature of almost every web browser so why exclude it on the iPhone? Firefox recently did something similar with ver3 beta 3 and removed the home button from the top toolbar. This caused a minor stir and they promptly added it back in for the next release.

So why is the absence of a home button such a problem? If a user browses several pages deep there’s no quick way to get back to square one. When my mom gets lost on the interwebs it’s the one button she knows will always get her back to a comfortable starting point. Now I know what you’re thinking… just make a bookmark! Yes that would work… but that would require the user to actually add it to their bookmarks and shuffle through them every time they wanna use it. Seems like a lot of work for an action so common.

Here’s a quick idea for the possible placement of a home button. When the user taps the address bar at the top, the standard navigation bar expands down and a home button is positioned all the way to the left (see the concept below). Currently that space is reserved for page title which is important, however the page title gets displayed in full when the address bar is closed so you never really lose any information or functionality with this layout. With a home icon up on the left the user is two taps away from getting back to their homepage. As for setting a new homepage, this action could be added to the menu that appears when you tap the + symbol on the bottom bar. I’m sure there are other possibilities but this seemed like the most convenient. Check it out: