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I am working on a legal research app with thousands of articles/legal sources and links between them. I want to add a floating "Return to [previously viewed article]" button on the screen when a user clicks certain links that takes them to another article, so that they can quickly get back to the previous context. A bit like the "Return to instance" button that appears in the bottom of the screen in Figma when you right-click an instance and click "go to main component". Is there a name for this type of pattern?

Example of "return to instance" button in Figma

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  • What, specifically a 'return to previous' action, or just a general pattern for floating buttons? Because there is certainly the latter - Google's Floating Access Button Commented Feb 12 at 15:43
  • There isn't really a name for this, but it could be described as a contextual navigation feature, as it depends on the user's context at that moment (the last article they viewed). Commented Feb 12 at 15:54
  • There's probably no definitive answer to this, but functionally and visually it's quite similar to certain types of Toast, such as the one in SalesForce's Lightning Design System. Commented Feb 12 at 18:30

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I am not sure, but in my opinion it's a FAB (Floating Action button). You can search it up online to see examples.

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    Hi, it will be great if you attached screenshots and link to pages for further details to clarify what a FAB means. Commented Feb 13 at 9:04
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It sounds as if this is just plain old hypertext: Click something in one (legal) document, get to see another document.

If that's the case, could you simply adopt the standard backward/forward controls from web browsers?

As for the floating control pattern: Plenty of users I've tested with aren't fond of floating controls, because they often obscure meaningful content. If your application has a toolbar, just place the "return" control in that section to cleanly separate interactions from content (except for the hypertext links, of course).

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