Bugzilla

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani (:aleca) from comment #9)
> > To is "always" showing, so no point wasting a hotkey on it.
> 
> The `To` field is closed if the user starts sending an email from a Newsgroup account.
> It's also good to have it to allow quick focus to that field.

+1. And gmail parity.

> > Hmm, but now that I look at this in detail, I see Alt+Ś is subject. Maybe we could just use Alt+T for to and Alt+C for cc? That is, use the accesskeys as they are + trigger opening it perhaps?
> 
> Mh, I'm not sure about this.
> I wouldn't mind using those accesskeys as accelerators to trigger opening/focus, but that means removing the duplicates (eg. the Tools menu uses the Alt+T combination). I'm okay with giving higher priority to the recipient fields.
> Thomas, what do you think?

I think your patch as-is is just perfect. Alt+* combos would come with several issues:
- We explicitly want to match the gmail shortcuts, for an easy transition to Thunderbird.
- Having internationally identical shortcut keys is great for us and enterprise when it comes to support. (Note: Ctrl+Shift+* are localizable only in theory, we never want anyone to localize this because that will end up breaking all of our international shortcut keys.)
- We don't want to depend on access key localization for these high-value shortcuts: localization can easily break things, access keys are all over (contacts side bar, attachment reminder bar, etc.), so it's actually quite hard to get that right in every language, and from experience, many localizers won't get this right.
- As Alex said, let's avoid breaking the main menu access keys as long as we can.

(In reply to Alessandro Castellani (:aleca) from comment #9)
> > To is "always" showing, so no point wasting a hotkey on it.
> 
> The `To` field is closed if the user starts sending an email from a Newsgroup account.
> It's also good to have it to allow quick focus to that field.

+1. And gmail parity.

> > Hmm, but now that I look at this in detail, I see Alt+Ś is subject. Maybe we could just use Alt+T for to and Alt+C for cc? That is, use the accesskeys as they are + trigger opening it perhaps?
> 
> Mh, I'm not sure about this.
> I wouldn't mind using those accesskeys as accelerators to trigger opening/focus, but that means removing the duplicates (eg. the Tools menu uses the Alt+T combination). I'm okay with giving higher priority to the recipient fields.
> Thomas, what do you think?

I think your patch as-is is just perfect. Alt+* combos would come with several issues:
- We explicitly want to match the gmail shortcuts, for an easy transition to Thunderbird.
- Having internationally identical shortcut keys is great for us and enterprise when it comes to support. (Note: Ctrl+Shift+* are localizable only in theory, we never want anyone to localize this because that will end up breaking all of our international shortcut keys.)
- We don't want to depend on access key localization for these high-value shortcuts: localization can easily break things, access keys are all over (contacts side bar, attachment reminder bar, etc.), so it's actually quite hard to get that right in every language, and from experience, many localizers won't get this right.
- As Alex said, let's avoid breaking the main menu access keys as long as we can.
- [Edit:] Ctrl+Shift+T/C/B are also convenient to use because both modifiers are on the outer left edge on the keyboard, allowing a very controlled double-handed usage without twisting your hands or risk of errors.