Comment 12 for bug 390724

If they indeed are, then that makes the issue worse, not better, because now it's bad design since it is by intention, not just an oversight. Like I explained above, this is not a matter of my personal preference but derived from basic principles of design. Why would it look weird to have similar sized buttons?? Design consistency will look weird?

That all GTK apps use such a system is not a defence, its not a good thing. Just for knowledge though, in which other app can I see the same behaviour? I haven't myself seen asymmetric back/forward buttons in other apps. EOG/Gthumb etc have equal sized ones but I guess that is because they do not have the drop down arrow next to them and no text to fit to either.

I don't use epiphany but looking at the screenshots, it follows the GNOME HIG closer than Firefox, and hence seems to suffer the same problem as Nautilus. I know a lot of people were pissed off about Firefox violating GNOME HIG but frankly, now I can see why they did that. Epiphany and the GNOME HIG seem to have never heard of Fitts law or of UI design in general, glad to know that Mozilla know its UI design and have violated the GNOME HIG for a very very good reason.