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Forward and back to what? These are relative statements. That said, I will share with you my own take on what I agree, is an absolute must have capability when working with this time-based workflow since we're constantly moving around in either direction.

First, here are the (relevant) keybindings I have defined in the sequencer shortcuts (remember, the MIDI clip editor shortcuts are separate).

Edit/Select Mode/Auto Automation edit mode A

Edit/Select Mode/Clip Shift-A

Edit/Clip/Loop Set R

Transport/Backward B

Transport/Forward F

Again, these bindings are only a small subset which I'm pointing out specific to the issue being discussed here. At first glance, they may appear to seem a bit whacky. That is, until you notice a few things. First, every binding I ever set (and therefore, use) is left hand only. This is critical as it means my right hand is always working the rodent and the left is always on the home row of the keyboard. The 2 hands can then work together to work fast and efficiently. 99% of the time, my select mode is set to "Clip". In fact, I never ever use Range or Rectangle. When I need to change the select mode to Automation, whack the A key........ to quickly get back to my normal Clip select mode, shift-A. One might think C would have been the ideal key for setting a select mode of Clip but I map that to Copy (and V for paste)....... ah more single left hand goodness!

OK so now we have those keybindings set up and are now capable of the following speedy goodness:

1. Left click anywhere on the timeline (see blue bar appear in this location). Whack F or B in order to move the play-head forward or back (depending on where you were coming from. What's nice about this is you can continue to press these keys moving forward or back to other things...... you'll see what I mean.

2. Select a clip and whack the R key (think "repeat"). Boom! Now that clip is set to be looped and due to the location of the now established Loop-start and Loop-end bars, you again, can make use of your newly establish F/B powers to easily navigate to that area. Thanks to Rui, the Loop Set operation mapped to R has recently been upgraded to act as a toggle. This means you can whack R again to unset the loop range as easily as you set it. Essentially the work flow being described here is 1) Select a clip 2) R 3) F or B as needed. It's difficult to explain just how fast and efficient this is given all the scenarios. In short, there's nothing faster than this "move around by block" approach.

Everything we're talking about here gets extended to other common operations.......... map D to Delete, C to Copy, V to paste, G (think "group") to Merge, T to unlink, Z to undo.

Sorry to have strayed a bit from the origins of Forward and Backward movements across the timeline but it's all related.

In fact, when you get into this type of work-flow, you realize the Backward, Rewind, Fast-Forward, and Forward icons are just sitting here unused taking up precious (too dramatic?) screen real-estate. This is why I had asked they be split out into their own sub-menu and added to the optional list of menus a user to choose to opt in or out of. Yes, I just shamelessly plugged my own feature request. LOL.