1162848 - clear console keyboard shortcut should be something other than Ctrl+L

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(DevTools :: Console, defect)

Description

[Cameron McCormack (:heycam)]

While I appreciate the history of Ctrl+L as the terminal clearing shortcut key, I find its use to clear the Web Console a little annoying, as it conflicts with Ctrl+L meaning to focus the location bar.  This means that when the web console is not open, Ctrl+L selects the address bar, but when it is open, it clears the console.  I don't think we should have shortcut keys that change meaning like this.

I suggest Ctrl+Shift+L instead.

Comment 1

[Cameron McCormack (:heycam)]

Since Ctrl+L (and not Cmd+L) is what Terminal.app on OS X uses, would it be OK to leave the key as Ctrl+L on OS X but be Ctrl+Shift+L on Windows/Linux?

Comment 2

[Dave Camp (:dcamp)]

I don't really feel qualified to weigh in on this.  I'm going to needinfo? jgriffiths who may also feel unqualified to weigh in, but can consult one of our UX folks if he so desires.

Comment 3

[Jeff Griffiths (:canuckistani) (:⚡︎)]

(In reply to Dave Camp (:dcamp) from comment #2)
> I don't really feel qualified to weigh in on this.  I'm going to needinfo?
> jgriffiths who may also feel unqualified to weigh in, but can consult one of
> our UX folks if he so desires.

My comment is from a competitive comparison PoV. Chrome on OS X does what I think might be the right thing:
* Ctrl+L always clears the console
* CMD+L always selects the location bar

On Windows it gets murkier:
* Ctrl+L clears the console, if focused, if not the location bar is selected.
( cmd+l takes you to the lock screen! )

In all cases cmd+shift+l does nothing, so at least it's available.

I think we should mimic chrome on OS X and bind ctrl+shift+l to clear the console on Win/Lin. I'm needinfoing bgrins for his opinion.

Comment 4

[Brian Grinstead [:bgrins]]

Coincidentally I just updated https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Keyboard_shortcuts#Web_Console with the ctrl+l shortcut yesterday.  ctrl+l is also my go-to shortcut for highlighting the URL bar so overriding that is pretty annoying.

I'm in the camp of staying with ctrl+l on OSX and then switching to something else for Linux / Windows. Ctrl+shift+l seems fine enough to me with the following notes:

* It seems Firebug uses alt+r.  Don't know where that came from originally, but it seems there is at least some precedent to use that: https://getfirebug.com/wiki/index.php/Keyboard_and_Mouse_Shortcuts.
* according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_keyboard_shortcuts#Command_line_shortcuts there isn't a defined shortcut for 'clear screen' in windows terminals.

Comment 5

[Jeff Griffiths (:canuckistani) (:⚡︎)]

(In reply to Cameron McCormack (:heycam) from comment #1)
> Since Ctrl+L (and not Cmd+L) is what Terminal.app on OS X uses, would it be
> OK to leave the key as Ctrl+L on OS X but be Ctrl+Shift+L on Windows/Linux?

Basically - great idea! Thanks Cameron! Let's ship it!

(In reply to Brian Grinstead [:bgrins] from comment #4)
...
> I'm in the camp of staying with ctrl+l on OSX and then switching to
> something else for Linux / Windows. Ctrl+shift+l seems fine enough to me

Agreed.

> with the following notes:
> * It seems Firebug uses alt+r.  Don't know where that came from originally,

Maybe we should bind this too? Muscle memory, etc.

Weirdly, chrome seems to bind alt+r to refresh the ui of their toolbox.

Comment 6

[Cameron McCormack (:heycam)]

(In reply to Jeff Griffiths (:canuckistani) from comment #5)
> > Since Ctrl+L (and not Cmd+L) is what Terminal.app on OS X uses, would it be
> > OK to leave the key as Ctrl+L on OS X but be Ctrl+Shift+L on Windows/Linux?
> 
> Basically - great idea! Thanks Cameron! Let's ship it!

Thanks!  I thought I was in for a hard time suggesting a UI change. ;)

BTW, is the a menu item or toolbar button somewhere that surfaces this keyboard shortcut?  If not, then I wonder if people won't naturally discover it, since it's different from the standard Ctrl+L one.

Comment 7

[Brian Grinstead [:bgrins]]

(In reply to Cameron McCormack (:heycam) from comment #6)
> (In reply to Jeff Griffiths (:canuckistani) from comment #5)
> > > Since Ctrl+L (and not Cmd+L) is what Terminal.app on OS X uses, would it be
> > > OK to leave the key as Ctrl+L on OS X but be Ctrl+Shift+L on Windows/Linux?
> > 
> > Basically - great idea! Thanks Cameron! Let's ship it!
> 
> Thanks!  I thought I was in for a hard time suggesting a UI change. ;)

What do you think about becoming our new devtools UX person?  Just throwing it out there...

> BTW, is the a menu item or toolbar button somewhere that surfaces this
> keyboard shortcut?  If not, then I wonder if people won't naturally discover
> it, since it's different from the standard Ctrl+L one.

I think the shortcut should also be included in the tooltip for the clear button.  We also have Bug 1122699 for surfacing all shortcuts from the toolbox somehow.

Comment 8

[Cameron McCormack (:heycam)]

(In reply to Brian Grinstead [:bgrins] from comment #7)
> What do you think about becoming our new devtools UX person?  Just throwing
> it out there...

UX for me is like art: I can recognise if it's good or not, but don't ask me to paint a masterpiece. ;)

Comment 9

[Brian Grinstead [:bgrins]]

Attachment: MozReview Request: Bug 1162848 - Use a single synthesizeKeyFromKeyTag helper for mochitest-devtools;r=jryans

Bug 1162848 - Use a sinlgle synthesizeKeyFromKeyTag helper for mochitest-devtools;r=jryans

Comment 10

[Brian Grinstead [:bgrins]]

Attachment: MozReview Request: Bug 1162848 - Make console 'clear' shortcut ctrl+shift+l on Windows / Linux;r=jryans

Bug 1162848 - Make console shortcut ctrl+shift+l on Windows / Linux;r=jryans

Comment 11

[Brian Grinstead [:bgrins]]

Had to refactor tests to solve this in a good way, since there was a test directly synthesizing ctrl+l.  Pulled in shared-head.js into webconsole so it could use synthesizeKeyFromKeyTag, then went ahead and pulled it into responsivedesign since it had a duplicated synthesizeKeyFromKeyTag function.

Tests pass locally, but here's a try push: https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=try&revision=71dea8331320

Comment 12

[J. Ryan Stinnett [:jryans] (Use needinfo, replies may be slow)]

Comment on attachment 8676904 [details]
MozReview Request: Bug 1162848 - Use a single synthesizeKeyFromKeyTag helper for mochitest-devtools;r=jryans

https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/22829/#review20355

Nit: sinlgle -> single in commit message

Comment 13

[J. Ryan Stinnett [:jryans] (Use needinfo, replies may be slow)]

Comment on attachment 8676905 [details]
MozReview Request: Bug 1162848 - Make console 'clear' shortcut ctrl+shift+l on Windows / Linux;r=jryans

https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/22831/#review20357

::: devtools/client/webconsole/webconsole.xul:65
(Diff revision 1)
> +#ifdef XP_MACOSX

Is there a reasonable way to do this at runtime, instead of using preprocessing?  I'd like to see less preprocessing, not more, in general.

If it's too hard, this is okay for now.

Comment 14

[Brian Grinstead [:bgrins]]

(In reply to J. Ryan Stinnett [:jryans] (use ni?) from comment #13)
> Comment on attachment 8676905 [details]
> MozReview Request: Bug 1162848 - Make console shortcut ctrl+shift+l on
> Windows / Linux;r=jryans
> 
> https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/22831/#review20357
> 
> ::: devtools/client/webconsole/webconsole.xul:65
> (Diff revision 1)
> > +#ifdef XP_MACOSX
> 
> Is there a reasonable way to do this at runtime, instead of using
> preprocessing?  I'd like to see less preprocessing, not more, in general.
> 
> If it's too hard, this is okay for now.

I asked around about the approach and it seems like this is the generally accepted way to do it.  Here are two other ways I thought of:

1) We could add a single key with both modifiers in xul and then remove the 'shift' one using JS in the case of osx.  Makes it a little harder to search the codebase / figure out what is going on, but it does get rid of the preprocessor.  It doesn't handle the case if we want to use a totally diff. shortcut in the future (alt+r for instance)
2) We could add two keys in the DOM and have them both be disabled="true" (haven't tested this, but I assume it would work).  Then depending on platform un-disable the one.  It does change the test a bit since we need to select the non disabled one, but I think this is the better option of the two.

I'm on the fence about if it's worth doing that though, since this is using XUL/<key> goodness anyway, so getting away from the preprocessor might be the least of our worries regarding portability.  If this will help with the 'attach a separate devtools frontend to firefox' idea, then I can go ahead and do (2).

Comment 15

[Brian Grinstead [:bgrins]]

Comment on attachment 8676904 [details]
MozReview Request: Bug 1162848 - Use a single synthesizeKeyFromKeyTag helper for mochitest-devtools;r=jryans

Bug 1162848 - Use a single synthesizeKeyFromKeyTag helper for mochitest-devtools;r=jryans

Comment 16

[Brian Grinstead [:bgrins]]

Comment on attachment 8676905 [details]
MozReview Request: Bug 1162848 - Make console 'clear' shortcut ctrl+shift+l on Windows / Linux;r=jryans

Bug 1162848 - Make console 'clear' shortcut ctrl+shift+l on Windows / Linux;r=jryans

Comment 17

[Brian Grinstead [:bgrins]]

Comment on attachment 8676905 [details]
MozReview Request: Bug 1162848 - Make console 'clear' shortcut ctrl+shift+l on Windows / Linux;r=jryans

Please re-review part 2, after making the changes with system.js.  New try push: https://treeherder.mozilla.org/#/jobs?repo=try&revision=5072c0dd103f

Comment 18

[J. Ryan Stinnett [:jryans] (Use needinfo, replies may be slow)]

Comment on attachment 8676905 [details]
MozReview Request: Bug 1162848 - Make console 'clear' shortcut ctrl+shift+l on Windows / Linux;r=jryans

https://reviewboard.mozilla.org/r/22831/#review20377

Cool, I like it!  Thanks for looking into it.

Comment 19

[Pulsebot]

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/fx-team/rev/dd6c3959f1a7
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/fx-team/rev/2b9780ca7aa8

Comment 20

[Cameron McCormack (:heycam)]

Thanks everyone!

Comment 21

[Carsten Book [:Tomcat]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/dd6c3959f1a7
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/2b9780ca7aa8

Comment 22

[Will Bamberg [:wbamberg]]

-> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Keyboard_shortcuts#Web_Console updated

Comment 25

[Khalid Syfullah Zaman [:khalid32]]

I have reproduced this bug on Nightly 40.0a1 (2015-05-07) on ubuntu 14.04 LTS, 32 bit!

The bug's fix is now verified on Latest Aurora 44.0a2!

Build ID: 20151110004043
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:44.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/44.0

[bugday-20151111]

Comment 26

[Mohammad Maruf Islam]

I have reproduced this bug with Firefox Nightly 40.0a1 (Build ID: 20150507030203) on 
windows 8.1 64-bit with the instructions from comment 0 .

Verified as fixed with Firefox Aurora 44.0a2 (Build ID: 20151118004041)

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:44.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/44.0

As this bug is also verified on Linux (Comment 25),I marking this bug as verified.