Back/Forward Buttons

cmalott, if you just opened Safari, the Back/Forward buttons will be grayed out since you just opened the homepage and there is yet no previous page to go to and no next page to go to. The Back/Forward buttons should activate after you go to a different page. If that is not what is the problem, when Safari is open, from the View menu choose "Customize Address Bar..." Then, click and drag the "old" Back/Forward buttons off the Address Bar and they should go poof in a cloud of smoke. Then click and drag a new Back/Forward button from the Customize options to the Safari Address Bar. Click Done. See if the buttons work after you navigate to new pages.

Did / Do you have (menus:) Safari>Private Browsing switched on (checked) ? If so then Safari will not (amongst other things) store pages in History or in the cache, for security purposes.

The Back & Forward buttons still work with Private Browsing turned on and you can still get a drop-down list of recent sites by holding down on the Back button. Although visited sites do not appear in history when Private Browsing is activated, they will appear in the Back buttons drop-down list and they are not cleared when you quit Private Browsing.

My back-forward buttons also just quit working. I tried the suggestion of dragging the icons back to the tool-bar--this works until I terminate the window for making the change, at which point the buttons disappear again. They work in Firefox. Also missing (I believe) are the helpful little instructional highlights ((those labels which appear when the curser rests on an icon.) that had returned with my update to Tiger .

I'm here replying to myself. For some strange reason, the buttons have reappeared! Great! Can't figure out why, after a couple of hours of so, but they are back! Thank you Apple Ghost?!