75898 - Shortcut for Message (Command-M) collides with Minimize (OS-reserved)

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Core :: DOM: UI Events & Focus Handling, defect)

Description

[Henri Sivonen (:hsivonen)]

Mac OS X reserves the key combination command-M for minimizing the frontmost
window. In Mozilla this key combination is used as a shortcut for Message.

Comment 1

[Aaron Leventhal]

=>  To Mac keyboard team.

Comment 2

[rubydoo123]

over to mail team to decide what to do

Comment 3

[Jean-Francois Ducarroz]

reassign to jglick

Comment 4

[Adam Masri]

From bug 29086, I came across this list of keybindings.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/ui/accessibility/mozkeyintro.html#xref

Here you will find a discussion about MacOS X's use of Cmd-M & Cmd-H. My $0.02
about this is that when Apple decides they want a keystroke, you're really not
going to change their minds. It's been quite some time since Apple grabbed a
keystroke for their own use across the entire UI, and they don't do it
haphazardly. From what I've read about the Dock thru the various rumor sites, it
sounds like Apple is going to make it better and more tweakable over time, not
disgard it as some in the Mac community might want. If app developers follow
Apple's rules, and these keys really do the same thing across all apps, then
they are truly useful for the entire OS X community.

I'd suggest we change New Message on OS X to Cmd-shift-M. We should consider
changing this on OS 9 as well for parity.

- Adam

Comment 5

[german]

Netscape is worrying about people who are using 6.x as an upgrade to 4.x.
The problem is this has implications far beyond a single change of one item, 
leading to possible a redesign of the 'New...' section in turn breaking the 
most commonly used keyboard shortcuts in 4.x.
4.x philosophy is geared towards having consistent keyboard shortcuts for the 
same new items, regardless of which component you're in, and accel-M was one of 
these very often used ones. People around the development team referred to them 
as being in "muscle memory".

Comment 6

[Adam Masri]

Of course, I'm all for consistency. But if all (or all well-behaved) apps use
Cmd-M to minimize the frontmost window, that's a useful feature.

We can't expect any OS to stop evolving. We have to be flexible when the OS
grabs a particular keystroke to do a global action. That's really just life, and
I'm sure it's something that the OS X community is willing to live with. I'm
sure that if MS decided to grab some global keystroke to do an action,
application developers would simply change their conflicting keystrokes. It's
happened before, and it'll happen again.

- Adam

Comment 7

[timeless]

<OT>Usually ms just adds new keys to the keyboard (or buttons to the 
mouse...) and specifies how they behave.  I can't recall a key that ms has 
commandeered in ages.

Comment 8

[jglick]

Reassigning to German since this has implications across the whole product.

Comment 9

[Steve Dagley]

Just to add my $.02 - Command-M has been new message in Netscape mail since 
Netscape had mail capability (95?).  I have no problem with ignoring Apple's 
recommendation of it be minimize under OS X as there is no equivalent under OS 9.  
That and I expect most people would rather have a shortcut for new message rather 
than minimize unless they spend a lot of time looking at pr0n they want to be 
able to quickly hide when the boss appears :-)

Comment 10

[Adam Masri]

And so what's wrong with that? ;)

Seriously, I think that if application developers embrace Cmd-M as minimize and
it becomes the norm across apps, it would be a very useful keyboard shortcut for
users. Moz will be a second-class citizen if it ignores HIG.

We can have our cake & eat it too. There are other unused keystrokes that can be
used besides Cmd-M in Moz.

- Adam

Comment 11

[Henri Sivonen (:hsivonen)]

OTOH, some people don't use the Mail&News component at all. If such a person
gets used to command-M in other apps, (s)he will be greatly annoyed if a mail
window shows up in Mozilla.

(I don't use Mozilla Mail&News and I'm quite annoyed when I accidentally click a
mailto link and a message window shows up.)

Comment 12

[Steve Dagley]

[OSX+] now is used to indicate stop ship bugs - this isn't

Comment 13

[Steve Dagley]

*** Bug 103033 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 14

[Bill McGonigle (not currently reading bugmail; please contact directly)]

According to HIG, the four reserved key-combinations for OS X are: cmd-H, cmd-Q,
cmd-M, and cmd-N.  Handling of cmd-N and cmd-Q are more important for Cocoa
apps, of course.

So, they're taking 4 and leaving a few hundred other combinations available. 
Yeah, that's inconvienient, but I think the sooner we get over it the better,
and the more OS-X like Mozilla will be.  BBedit grabs cmd-h and it's a real pain
in the ass when I'm trying to organize my apps (for example).  The only way to
hide it is with the menu, and besides being inconvienient, it's an accessbility
issue.

Now, Apple didn't go and change cmd-n to cmd-shift-n in the current OS9 Finder
and Mozilla should follow suit.  This change should be OS X only, leaving the OS
9 users without any surprises.  Switching to a new operating system is the
perfect time to get these changes in - the longer this is held off, and I'll bet
money Mozilla will conform eventually, the harder it will be on the users, and
the larger the installed base will be.

Cmd-shift-M gets my vote because it's "create me a new blank mail composer" and
"create me a new blank webpage composer" already gets cmd-shift-n.  Of course,
ctrl-M is available and cross-platform, but un mac-like.  But since we're
already decided to do things like a mac, it shouldn't stop half-way.

The muscle-memory arguement is valid, but muscle-memory can re-learn.  The
switch to OSX is making us all re-learn alot of habits, but we hope in the end
we'll be better for it.  Folks who disagree can run OS9 until the 32-bit clock
runs out, and keep their cmd-m.

Comment 15

[Aaron Leventhal]

Is this one in limbo?

Brade, do you have any interest in taking it?

Comment 16

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

reassigning.

Comment 17

[Steve Dagley]

Ok, I'm starting to come around to this now that I live almost full time in OS X
and have finally learned that command-M no longer is Make Alias (even the Finder
had to change :-).  I know we have platform specific XUL, this should be as
simple as having a Mac OS X specific set of keybindings.

Comment 18

[Aaron Leventhal]

Marking nsbeta1

The solution agreed upon at the macdev meeting:
Command+shift+M should bring up compose message on OS X
Command+M or Command+shift+M should bring up compose message on OS 9

Comment 19

[Kathleen :Brade]

sdagley--please add plus to nsbeta1 (I'm told you can do this for mac bugs)

Comment 20

[Kathleen :Brade]

Attachment: add new overlay; patch 1

Comment 21

[Kathleen :Brade]

adding mcarlson since this fix adds a keybinding and will need her approval

Comment 22

[Michele Carlson]

l10n approved. Please check this in this week.
thanks

Comment 23

[selmer (gone)]

Please update this bug with an [adt1] - [adt3] impact rating (or take it off the
list if it doesn't even rate adt3.)  Thanks!

Comment 24

[Kathleen :Brade]

For the record, I don't believe that Aaron's suggestion (comment 18) was from a
macdev meeting.  My recollection is been that macdev people think OS9 and OSX
should be consistent (for example, so running the OS9 build on OSX will work the
same).  Lori Kaplan, Steve Dagley, Mike Pinkerton, and I have all agreed with
this decision.

reviews please?

Comment 25

[Akkana Peck]

Comment on attachment 77469 [details] [diff] [review]
add new overlay; patch 1

r=akkana on the code, assuming that everyone agrees that the right thing to do
is change the binding for all macs, not just os X (not what aaron said, but
what Kathy said macdev agreed to).

Comment 26

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

for the windows and linux version of the new overlay, why do we need to include 
the dtd?

+<!DOCTYPE window SYSTEM "chrome://messenger/locale/mailOverlay.dtd">

Comment 27

[Kathleen :Brade]

Attachment: patch 2 (removing dtd in win/linux)

Comment 28

[Akkana Peck]

Comment on attachment 77712 [details] [diff] [review]
patch 2 (removing dtd in win/linux)

r=akkana

Comment 29

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

what about the new message (Ctrl-M) in addressbook?  does this patch address 
that?

Comment 30

[Kathleen :Brade]

Attachment: patch 3 (includes addressbook fix)

addressbook fix is to include the platform overlay in the file addressbook uses


note:  commercial changes will probably be required; that will need a bugscape
bug.

Comment 31

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

Comment on attachment 77734 [details] [diff] [review]
patch 3 (includes addressbook fix)

sr=sspitzer

Comment 32

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Comment on attachment 77734 [details] [diff] [review]
patch 3 (includes addressbook fix)

a=asa (on behalf of drivers) for checkin to the 1.0 trunk

Comment 33

[Akkana Peck]

Comment on attachment 77734 [details] [diff] [review]
patch 3 (includes addressbook fix)

r=akkana

Comment 34

[Jaime Rodriguez, Jr.]

adt1.0.0+ (on ADT's behalf) approval for checkin into 1.0.

Comment 35

[Kathleen :Brade]

this fix was checked in earlier today

Comment 36

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

even though bug 74244 works for history, this issue for mail compose is still a
problem.

tested using comm 200.04.09.08 bits on mac 10.1.3 and 9.1 (emulated). actual
results:

* cmd+M still brings up mail compose
* shift+cmd+M does nothing
* in the menu, File > New > Message still lists Command+M for the shortcut

Comment 37

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

looks like the windows version got into content/messenger/platformMailOverlay.xul:

<!-- windows version of platformMailOverlay.xul -->

<overlay id="platformMailOverlay"
         xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul">

</overlay>

Comment 38

[Kathleen :Brade]

Attachment: build magic fix

Thanks to sfraser for helping me figure out this one.  We want to force the
platform overlay so include +

Comment 39

[Kathleen :Brade]

reviews please?

Comment 40

[Mike Pinkerton (not reading bugmail)]

Comment on attachment 78413 [details] [diff] [review]
build magic fix

r=pink.

works for me with my 4/10/02 branch build (i guess because the mac version of
the file is newer in my tree). however, cmd-m to minimize the window doesn't
work at all.

Comment 41

[Simon Fraser [no longer active]]

Comment on attachment 78413 [details] [diff] [review]
build magic fix

sr=sfraser

Comment 42

[Kathleen :Brade]

the build magic has landed on the trunk; waiting for a= to land on branch

Comment 43

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Comment on attachment 78413 [details] [diff] [review]
build magic fix

a=asa (on behalf of drivers) for checkin to the 1.0 branch

Comment 44

[Kathleen :Brade]

This fix is now checked into both trunk and mozilla 1.0 branch.
I am going to open a new bug on the issue of cmd-M not doing minimize due to
keyword messiness and process.

QA--please verify on both trunk and branch

Comment 45

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

vrfy'd fixed using 2002.04.16 commercial branch and trunk bits on mac 10.1.3.

cmd+shift+M now brings up mail compose.

cmd+M doesn't minimize, but that's covered by bug 137523.

Comment 46

[Jesse Ruderman]

Ian Kennedy filed bug 139212 on Mac OS 9 saying that Ctrl+M no longer works for
opening a message.

Comment 47

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

adding branch verification keyword.  This bug has been verified in a comment,
just moving that to the keyword field.