119960 - Add ability to open tabs on pressing enter in URL bar

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(SeaMonkey :: Tabbed Browser, enhancement)

Description

[Marcus Pallinger]

With bug 105537 being resolved to make control+enter open a URL in a new tab
from thr URL bar, I'd like to open this but to make it possible to use enter in
the URL bar to open a new tab, as this _REALLY_ suits my browsing style.

Comment 1

[Marcus Pallinger]

I forgot to mention this, but obviously it would be controlled by a pref.

Comment 2

[Jeremy M. Dolan]

You're obviously an obscene minority, is it really that hard to hit control too?
Custom keybindings are planed eventually. I don't see a specific pref for this
happening.

Comment 3

[Marcus Pallinger]

A minority, yes, but a quick scan of the first half of bug 105537 resulted in 3
people preferring this behaviour, and having to press ctrl+enter, on every URL
is gona be a bit of a PITA.

I'm not advocating removing ctrl+enter for openign the URL in a new tab, as alot
of peopel seem to want to use ctrl+enter to open in a new tab.

Comment 4

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

confirming rfe...up to hyatt and marlon to decide if they wanna mark this
wontfix, though.

Comment 5

[David Hyatt]

Reassigning to new component owner.

Comment 6

[jag (Peter Annema)]

-> nobody, future, helpwanted

Wait for configurable keybindings.

Comment 7

[Quinn Yost (mythdraug)]

*** Bug 121608 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[Quinn Yost (mythdraug)]

Please give us a hidden pref.  

This bug combined with bug 50255 completely breaks 
browser.tabs.opentabfor.urlbar for windows users.

Comment 9

[Marcus Pallinger]

Attachment: Version 1 of pach to allow new tabs on enter

This is a first go at this patch.

Due to the fact that Control+Enter seems to not be working on MacOSX either, I
havn't been able to test this patch to any degree at all.

Comment 10

[Marcus Pallinger]

I may aswell take this bug.

Comment 11

[Marcus Pallinger]

Accept.

Anyone know what I do with the patch now that it's here?

Comment 12

[Jesse Ruderman]

I also vote for wontfix.

Comment 13

[Quinn Yost (mythdraug)]

BZ:  Could you provide some guidance here?

Marcus:  From discussions outside bugzilla, I am 
  under the impression that your patch would be
  more well accepted if there was not a UI for
  the pref.

Comment 14

[Marcus Pallinger]

With bug 122086, it sounds as it it may be better to leave the UI in the patch 
until Ctrl+enter works on all platforms (just a rehash of 122086)

Comment 15

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

The patch looks fine as far as that goes...  Maybe the "ctrl" should act the
same as shift does for loading tabs in background/foreground?    There "shift"
will toggle the sense of the pref to the reverse.  So if middle-click opens new
tabs in background, shift-middle-click does foreground (and vice versa).  So I
would suggest that we have one pref for whether enter opens a new window or new
tab (default to window) and have "ctrl" reverse that pref.  This means that
ctrl-enter to open new tab would always be on (is that a bad idea?).  It also
means that you could easily get tabs instead of windows by default.

jag?  thoughts?

Comment 16

[Marcus Pallinger]

Now the current pref toggles between Ctrl+Enter opening a new window or tab. So
you are sugesting that Shift+control+enter does the oposite of the pref?

Tnd the new pref should toggle between opening in current window/tab and shift
enter doing the opisite?

That could be useful.


Re: The patch, The change in the prefs screen actually seems to imply that with
the pref turned off, enter will open aurl in a new window, and that's not true.
i'll change the screen a bit to make it no longer lie.

Comment 17

[Marcus Pallinger]

Attachment: Patch that 9in theory) adds shift to negate tab preferences

This paatch, in theroy, uses shift to negate enter and conrol enter
preferences.
It assumes that if browser.tabs.opentabfor.urlbar is false then Control+Enter
opens the url in a new window. Can someone verify that the normal behaviour of
Control enter is open the URL in a new window? 
If not, then the prefs screen is lying (as in "Open tabs instead of windows for
... Control+Enter in URL Bar")

Issues:
* Shift enter doesn't actually appar to be doing anyhting on enter (I'm nto
sure if shift Enter works on OSX either, will look itno this)
* I only check for aTriggeringEvent once, I should be checking it in each of
the ORed sections when it's needed.
* Can someone verify that the following is a valid check for shift not being
pressed:
'shiftKey' in aTriggeringEvent && !aTriggeringEvent.shiftkey || !'shiftKey' in
aTriggeringEvent
* I havn't actually checked the XUL changes to make sur hey work (I moved the
checkbox out of the grouping)

I won't obsolete the first patch yet, as someone may decide this shift thing is
a bad idea.

Comment 18

[Marcus Pallinger]

Can someone please flag the seccond attachment as needs work? (and who do I ask
to give me permission to edit attachments?)

Comment 19

[jag (Peter Annema)]

Comment on attachment 66729 [details] [diff] [review]
Patch that 9in theory) adds shift to negate tab preferences

per request, needs work

I think you misunderstood Boris, btw, but I'll let him explain.

Comment 20

[jag (Peter Annema)]

Comment on attachment 66592 [details] [diff] [review]
Version 1 of pach to allow new tabs on enter

I like this patch better, I think, but I suggest we hold off on adding new UI
for this feature until we've got a spec for this feature and its UI.

Comment 21

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

I think you misunderstood me too.. :)  My suggestion was that we have, by default:

Enter opens in same tab, ctrl-enter opens in new tab.

And we have a preference for "enter opens new tab".  When that's set,

Enter opens in new tab, ctrl-enter opens in same tab.

The hard part in this setup is letting people know that ctrl-enter will do
something interesting (since the pref text will not naturally include it)...

Comment 22

[Quinn Yost (mythdraug)]

Am I wrong in thinking that there are three states we are looking at?

Currently we have
  1) URLbar opens into new window on ctrl-enter (opentabfor.urlbar=false)
  2) URLbar opens into new tab on ctrl-enter    (opentabfor.urlbar=true)
  3) URLbar opens into current window/tab on enter (opentabfor.urlbar=[true|false])

As odd as it seems we are probably looking at using ctrl-enter and shift-enter
and letting the user assign through a pref set which key does what.

  1) URLbar opens into new window on ______
  2) URLbar opens into new tab on ______
  3) URLbar opens into current window/tab on ______

Where the user selects one of enter, ctrl-enter, or shift-enter for each.

This would, of course, require some sanity checking to make sure that each
choice is only used once.

Comment 23

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

> 1) URLbar opens into new window on ctrl-enter (opentabfor.urlbar=false)

We don't currently have this.  If opentabfor.urlbar=false, we treat ctrl-enter
and enter exactly the same.

Comment 24

[Quinn Yost (mythdraug)]

Oh, good(?).   Nevermind, cary-on, forget my last comment.

Comment 25

[Marcus Pallinger]

Ahh ,yes, I did misunderstand Boris :)

So ratehr than having two choices, We only have one allowing for toggling enter
and Control enter to open tab in new window.

What's the best way to do this?

One way is to remove browser.tabs.opentabfor.urlbar, and use
browser.tabs.opentabfor.urlbarenter to indicate that we are toggling the two.

This way Control+enter doesn't suddenly stop working for users who expect it to.

Can someone sugest a better name for the pref, or is the name I chose fine?

I'll create two prefs later on today, one that only removes the open URL on
Control Enter field in the Prefs pannel, and one with the UI changes to allow
the two to be swapped.

Comment 26

[Marcus Pallinger]

Attachment: Create new tabs on enter (without UI)

This is jsut a version of attachment 66592 [details] [diff] [review] without the UI in the prefs pannel.

I havn't gotten around to doing a new version that swaps between Ctrl+enter
openign a new tab and enter openign in current tab and enter opening a new tab
and Ctrl+enter openign in current window.

(Can someone please obsolete patch 66592)

Comment 27

[Quinn Yost (mythdraug)]

Marcus:  Is the patch ready to get r, sr and checkin?

Comment 28

[Marcus Pallinger]

Attachment 66851 [details] [diff] Adds a pref for Enter to open a new URL in a tab, without UI.
As far as i know, it's ready to go. the rest of it (using the pref to toggle
between enter or Ctrl enter to open a new tab) seems to be part of the re-open
of bug 105537

Comment 29

[Alfonso Martinez]

*** Bug 129144 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 30

[Gilles Durys]

*** Bug 139729 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 31

[Marcus Pallinger]

Attachment: Newer patch that applies cleanly

New version of previous patch that applies correctly to latest trunk.

Comment 32

[Marcus Pallinger]

Jag, bzbarsky Is this patch okay for r/sr?

Comment 33

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

So when the pref is set, ctrl-enter, enter, alt-enter will all open a new tab,
right?  Is that the desired behavior?

Comment 34

[Marcus Pallinger]

Good point, I'll add checks to exclude Ctrl enter (unless the ctrl enter pref is
also set) and Alt Enter. Patch comign soon.

Comment 35

[Marcus Pallinger]

Is it possible to do a simple check to see if any modifiers are pressed (or if
none were pressed), or do I need to check each one individually?

(Or can anyone point to a resource where I can find this out?)

Comment 36

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

I think you need to check every one individually....

Comment 37

[Marcus Pallinger]

I haven't used Mozilla for a while. It's not an issue for me. Feel free to close or take as you wish

Comment 38

[Serge Gautherie (:sgautherie)]

Filter on "Nobody_NScomTLD_20080620"

Comment 39

[Philip Chee]

I'm closing this as WONTFIX. I don't think this should be in core code and it certainly sounds like extension fodder e.g. the Tab Clicking Options Extensions.