1331631 - CTRL+R and CTRL+F don't work on twitter.com

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Web Compatibility :: Site Reports, defect)

Description

[u580221]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:53.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/53.0
Build ID: 20170115030210

Steps to reproduce:

CTRL+R and CTRL+F don't work on twitter.com. I need to manually click the "Reload" button, and I have no idea how I could even search the page. Needless to say, this is extremely annoying.

I assume this is because the page's JavaScript somehow catches the keyboard events for this. However, the solution is obvious: *don't let pages do that*.

1. Open anything on twitter.com
2. Press CTRL+F or CTRL+R


Actual results:

Nothing


Expected results:

Page reload or firefox' search bar popping up respectively.

Comment 1

[u580221]

Similarly look at this page: https://discuss.atom.io/t/why-is-atom-so-slow/11376/63

If you press CTRL+F, you'll get a hideous in-page search bar. It is awful because;

1. It is at a different place so this is unexpected and will throw users off because of that alone

2. The results are written in way too small text, and there is nothing actually highlighted or scrolled to in the actual page. The page's search bar is horrid and appears to be an idiotic idea some JavaScript developer came up with just because they could.


Similarly to clipboard events which many sites abuse to*copy advertisements along with the text I actually wanted to copy, being able to catch CTRL+R or CTRL+F per default is just an awful idea and I haven't seen a *single* page that actually did something useful instead of some undesirable **** with it.

Comment 2

[George Veneel Dogga [::TheLayman]]

(In reply to jonas from comment #0)

Hey, I'm unable to reproduce this bug. Can you be more specific? 
CTRL+F and CTRL+R are working perfectly fine for me.
Build identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:53.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/53.0

Comment 3

[George Veneel Dogga [::TheLayman]]

(In reply to jonas from comment #1)

I think that is an in-page feature. Pressing Ctrl+F twice gives you the firefox-search bar. I'm not sure whether we can classify this as bug or not.

Comment 4

[Cosmin Muntean [:cmuntean], Ecosystem QA]

User Agent:  Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:53.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/53.0
Firefox: 53.0a1, Build ID: 20161125214341

I have tested this issue on latest Firefox (50.1.0) release and latest Nightly (53.0a1) build on Ubuntu 14.04 x86_64, but I could not reproduce the issue. I was able to use the "CTRL+R" and "CTRL+F" hotkeys and are working as expected on twitter pages. 

Jonas, you can reproduce the issue also on Firefox release or only on Nightly? 
Also, can you please retest this issue using a new clean profile in order to eliminate custom settings as a possible cause (https://goo.gl/PNe90E) and report back the results? 

Related to comment 1, I have also tested the provided page in other browsers and the search bar functionality from the page is the same. So I don't think that is a Firefox issue.

Comment 5

[u580221]

This issue seems to be related to https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1331638 : when that bug hits, CTRL+R and CTRL+F are also completely broken (pressing them multiple times does nothing).

However, the underlying problem here is that Twitter or any web page can catch and disable either CTRL+R or CTRL+F in the first place.

> Related to comment 1, I have also tested the provided page in other browsers and the search bar functionality from the page is the same. So I don't think that is a Firefox issue.

Just because other browsers made similarly poor decisions about what a web page can override doesn't mean it's a good idea or not a bug.. (IMHO)

Comment 6

[Cosmin Muntean [:cmuntean], Ecosystem QA]

I have managed to reproduce this issue if I set the "dom.webnotifications.enabled" pref to "false". The "CTRL+R" and "CTRL+F" hotkeys and are no longer working on twitter pages. 

For the other issue related to: https://discuss.atom.io/t/why-is-atom-so-slow/11376/63, you should log a different bug.

Comment 7

[Riskable]

This is not a bug.  Web applications need the ability to override these keyboard shortcuts.  Just because Twitter made a poor decision doesn't mean we should be breaking perfectly legitimate functionality for other sites/apps.

"But how could overriding Ctrl-F *ever* be a good thing?!"

Simple:  Imagine you have a spreadsheet (or database view) open with 100,000 rows.  Because the app developer is courteous they don't just dump all 100,000 records to the user's browser and say, "so long, RAM!" They simply grab chunks of the data and dynamically update the view with new chunks as the user scrolls or if they jump to a particular section.

If the app *doesn't* override Ctrl-F in that situation how is the user going to perform a "find" operation on that spreadsheet/data view?  Sure, they can navigate to the menu but the opposite argument carries just as much weight:  You can go to the menu for Twitter too.

Whether or not a keyboard shortcut should be overridden is entirely *dependent on context.*  Under certain circumstances overriding any and *all* keyboard shortcuts makes sense.  Remote desktop applications, terminals, emulators, etc.

It is just as likely that someone would open an bug report if Google Sheets (Docs) suddenly stopped being able to override Ctrl-F...  "Ctrl-F to search doesn't work in Google Docs anymore!"  I myself rely on this feature regularly to find things in my spreadsheets.  The browser's built-in find function won't work for spreadsheets that span multiple tabs/sheets or large amounts of data but because Google can override that shortcut the user is given a better (and more intuitive) experience.

Comment 8

[Adam Stevenson [:adamopenweb]]

Since bug #1331638 could be resolved as early as today by Twitter and this bug is related to it. Let's wait for it to land and test this again. :)

Comment 9

[Julien Cristau [:jcristau]]

Too late for firefox 52, mass-wontfix.

Comment 10

[Mike Taylor [:miketaylr]]

This no longer repros for me (probably been fixed for a few months now). Let's close, thanks twitter!