1351534 - Old hotkey for "Highlight All" no longer works

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Toolkit :: Find Toolbar, defect)

Description

[Jon]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.12; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.0
Build ID: 20170316213829

Steps to reproduce:

1. open find bar (CTRL + F)
2. type a string to search for on your page.
3. press CTRL + A



Actual results:

The "Highlight all" button no longer is toggled.


Expected results:

CTRL + A is supposed to toggle the Highlight All button. I've been using this feature for years, and now with the newest firefox patch it stopped working.

As a side note, I noticed it was CHANGED to ctrl + L, however since you don't give the user the ability to remap this back to CTRL + A, I consider this a bug for both reasons. 

If you are going to change a hotkey some of your users have been using for years, at least give us the ability to remap it back in the about:config.

Comment 1

[Mike de Boer [:mikedeboer]]

I'm sorry this change inconvenienced you, but I'm afraid this ship has sailed.

It's inevitable that change interrupts someones workflow and adjusting your muscle memory to get used to the new hotkey takes time. However, encountering a change like this is seldom a positive experience.

If we add more options to about:config for each and every change we make, we'd be imposing a massive maintenance burden on developers. I hope you understand this.

Comment 2

[Jon]

(In reply to Mike de Boer [:mikedeboer] from comment #1)
> I'm sorry this change inconvenienced you, but I'm afraid this ship has
> sailed.
> 
> It's inevitable that change interrupts someones workflow and adjusting your
> muscle memory to get used to the new hotkey takes time. However,
> encountering a change like this is seldom a positive experience.
> 
> If we add more options to about:config for each and every change we make,
> we'd be imposing a massive maintenance burden on developers. I hope you
> understand this.

I understand the burden, I am a programmer myself.

I would argue though that it isn't a matter of muscle memory in this instance as my left hand, which is the only hand I use for hotkeys as my right arm is engaged controlling my mouse for scroll functions, is not capable of bending in the way it needs to in order to trigger the CTRL + L hotkey in a natural method.

If the hotkey were say, CTRL+J, it would be slightly more manageable, but J is about the maximum extent of my reach. Beyond that, I have to completely interrupt my workflow and switch to the right-control key with my left hand, or interrupt my right hands mouse control to perform the function. It no longer is a natural use of the hotkey, and it becomes a major inconvenience, not a merely a minor inconvenience of simply retraining muscle memory.

If you wontfix at least consider picking a different, left-side keyboard letter so that it can still remain a natural action once I retrain my memory.

Comment 3

[Jon]

I would also like to point out that all other major browsers make this function intuitive and natural to use. The change you've made has made your browser less desirable to myself as ease of use of this function wasn't previously a deterrent for me to use firefox, but now that it is not easy to use anymore, it is definitely working against me wanting to use the browser.

With the fierce competition chrome provides to your user base, I personally would feel an immense pressure and consider user retention a high priority were I a developer on the firefox project. I have been a long time advocate of firefox and I even go out of my way to point out reasons to people why it is superior to other browsers in many small, but critical ways despite it's larger than normal memory foot print (memory is cheap).

At the risk of becoming TLDR, I will close with this: This change definitely knocks my personal firefox versus chrome score down a fair bit. I know I am in the minority when it comes to THIS function, but I would feel negligent in my loyal-user duties if I didn't at least try... I am an efficiency nazi and this was one of those efficiency tools for me, being able to quickly find the keyword on the page I am looking for rather than reading an entire article is an invaluable feature and the loss of this could easily push someone like myself over to chrome. If it is enough for me, I know it will be enough for others, too.

Thanks for reading and your consideration.

Comment 4

[Mike de Boer [:mikedeboer]]

Thanks Jon, for your considerate comments.

The thing that makes this more usable in Chrome & other browser is the fact that Highlight All can not be switched off at all. It's on by default and stays that way.

In Firefox Nightly we are working on a new feature that will modernize the highlighting experience entirely. Feel free to try it out!

Additionally, prior to Firefox 52, the Highlight All state (on or off) was not remembered between windows and/ or sessions. That is now fixed as well, so you'll probably need to use the toggle feature less often.

I am open to considering a different hotkey for this feature, but it'd be low priority to take on - I have to be honest here. A volunteer can always pick it up, of course. Regardless, that'll need to happen in a different bug than this one.

Comment 5

[malaquiasjp]

Linux user here and I also don’t understand how a MacOS-only issue could trigger a decision that harm the usability for users on all platforms. "Ctrl-F, Alt-A" was a convenient one-handed sequence that is not even close to the effort to do a "Ctrl-F, Alt-L", that requires to take the hand off the mouse and look to the keyboard, entirely breaking the work flow.
It makes me wonder with how many users in consideration this was decided. Please consider, if is not possible to bring it back as it efficiently was for years, at least give us the option to customize it.