1439740 - consider reducing the number of keyboard shortcuts for developer tools

Status: NEW

(DevTools :: General, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Firefox users report accidentally launching developer tools. These users range from casual users who won't ever need them to sophisticated users who simply mistype. One thing that may make this worse for Firefox users compared to users of other browsers (Chrome and Edge) is that we have more than a dozen keyboard shortcuts for various developer tools while the other browsers seem to have just one keyboard shortcut. Perhaps we should reconsider having so many keyboard shortcuts.

Comment 1

[Julian Descottes [:jdescottes]]

Related to this, we are currently testing an onboarding flow for users who don't typically use devtools (see meta https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1408969). It is currently going through an experiment in Beta.

With this feature, users which have never really used devtools ([1]) will see an onboarding page the first time they trigger a DevTools entry point (keyboard shortcut, etc...). We should also be measuring which key shortcuts led to open this onboarding page, which could help us decide which shortcuts are confusing for users.

Going further we can think about two things:
- disable some shortcuts for users that have never opened devtools, just keep the most used ones
- add an option in the onboarding page to turn off all shortcuts

Technically, all the devtools shortcuts are registered in a single place: https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/devtools/shim/devtools-startup.js, so it should be pretty easy to implement this once we decide what we want to keep or not.

[1] right now we detect "existing devtools users" by checking if they used the console previously

Comment 2

[:Harald Kirschner :digitarald]

Can you provide a summary of the reports you found with some examples?

Comment 3

[Noah (NoahSUMO/SolidSnake) [:Noah]]

Here's the user report that kicked off this bug:
https://twitter.com/shelly_voelker/status/965369366954020865
"The F12 developer tool box or whatever that thing is called keeps popping up anytime I'm trying to type something in Firefox. It is horribly disruptive and I can't get any help or how to stop it. It only happens in Firefox and I have to use another browser." [Note: She's on Win 7]
Screenshot of DevTools > Storage open:
https://twitter.com/shelly_voelker/status/965768951841075200


I was only able to find one other instance of Dev Tools repeatedly opening at random in the SUMO forums:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1042229
From Jan. 19, 2015:
"I've tried everything I can find on-line but I cannot prevent the developer tools from interfering when I type in a search or type in text on a web page.

I have gone to about:config and turned off every dev listed, still nothing changes.

Please tell me how to remove the developer tools from my computer."

He replies back on Feb. 18, 2015, still experiencing the same problem:
"Hi Kirvee

Sorry I didn't post any more, my problem isn't solved although I thought it was. I just gave up as solving it kept me from getting deadlines done. I still have the same problem - I've uninstalled and reinstalled Firefox, I've dealt with the about:config, I've turned off all of the add-ons etc. I'm stumped and needed to actual get my work done.

Hope you find an answer."

Another user also had the same problem in that same thread:
------------------------------------------------------------------
"I've been having this exact same problem for a while and it is infuriating and makes Firefox practically UNUSABLE.

Unfortunately, unlike John, my problems don't go away in Safe Mode. And I have allllllllll the values for this damn thing set to False. Since I make themes, I normally love this tool and use it a lot, but now it's just a headache. I can't type properly, can't browser, can't do anything. It pops up when I type, pops up while I'm scrolling, pops up when I change tabs.

It doesn't help that this also happens in Chrome, so I feel like it might be my keyboard's fault, but I use a laptop and can't figure out how to make it behave.

The devtools popping up when not wanted wouldn't be so annoying if it didn't change the focus of the typing cursor. So like, I could type and it would just be at the bottom flashing its little heart out. I wouldn't care if it did that. But as it is, it's disrupting my browsing experience and I can't afford a new laptop yet.

Does anyone have any solution that isn't: safe mode or about:config?"

Recap of the above:
--------------------
Firefox Safe Mode never really solved the problem. There's probably more reports of this in the wild. And anyway we dice it, not being able to fully disable the Developer Tools or the nag screen that appears when you accidentally hit one of the keyboard shortcuts while DevTools are disabled via about:config's devtools.enabled is a problem.

I think adding a UX option to permanently & fully disable all DevTools & their shortcuts would be the easiest way to solve this for the average user who is annoyed by this. And it needs to supress that onboarding nag screen that's triggered by DevTools shortcuts too.

Example of nag screen found here:
about:devtools?reason=KeyShortcut&tabid=24&keyid=toggleToolbar

Comment 4

[Julian Descottes [:jdescottes]]

"It doesn't help that this also happens in Chrome", so indeed it looks like a keyboard (layout? hardware?) issue, that triggers a shortcut we share with Chrome DevTools (so maybe F12?). 

> I think adding a UX option to permanently & fully disable all DevTools & their shortcuts would 
> be the easiest way to solve this for the average user who is annoyed by this. And it needs to 
> supress that onboarding nag screen that's triggered by DevTools shortcuts too.

This is bug 1414003. Note that the onboarding ("nag") screen is still an experiment, so we won't start adding features to it yet.

Also, starting with Firefox 60, users could set "devtools.policy.disabled" to true and restart Firefox to completely prevent DevTools from starting. The preference name will most likely change in 61 cycle (bug 1440675), but that can be worth mentioning to users.

Comment 5

[:Harald Kirschner :digitarald]

I am concerned that the onboarding flow is triggered by existing keyboard shortcuts and with no way of opting out it is more intrusive than just opening tools. I have not found a reason in our feature requirements why shortcuts where kept.

---

Thank you :Noah, this is a great list. To keep this bug focussed on reducing the count of shortcuts I want to clarify that many of the issues described in these reports are not about *too many shortcuts* but some misconfigured keyboard or other installed apps/extensions that cause triggering of shortcuts. This could happen to any other feature, like constantly opening the bookmarks manager or downloads.

Let us know if devtools.policy.disabled works for those users; it should broadly eradicate *all of devtools* from the browser.

Comment 6

[:Harald Kirschner :digitarald]

ni? to make sure :Noah sees the previous comment.

Comment 7

[Patrick Brosset <:pbro>]

I'm worried that the reports from comment 3 (one more in bug 1438526) are actually not about keyboard shortcuts. Maybe some of them are, but some of them sound like people are just typing some search terms or web addresses into the address bar and then devtools just pops up. This sounds super annoying, but also something I have never seen before.

Comment 8

[Patrick Brosset <:pbro>]

Moving this inactive P2 to the backlog (P3)

Comment 10

[Julian Descottes [:jdescottes]]

From Bug 1520205:

(In reply to El Stellino from Bug 1520205 comment #0)

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:64.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/64.0

Steps to reproduce:

Just press F12.
If you are not a developer, like probably 95% of the internet users worldwide, you ended up pressing it by mistake.

Actual results:

Of course, it opens the developers’ toolbox, because everyone’s a developer, no?

Expected results:

The idea would be that if F12 is pressed, nothing happens.

How about a second level keystroke like Shift+F12? How about, even better, shipping firefox without it? Developers would surely know their way round to install it as an addon…
Or if not possible, to at least have the chance of switching it on/off (and set on "off" by default), to avoid this daily nuisance to all the millions of browsers users that aren’t developers (and who perhaps aren’t that "advanced" to arrive here to ask its removal).

Before submitting, I’ve just checked: Ctrl+Shift+I has the exact same behaviour of F12. What’s the use of F12? can it be removed altogether, then?
Also, I used to use this solution, that no longer works: modifying in about:config the string devtools.toolbox.host to "null", but now it comes back to the "bottom" value as soon as I press F12, as it evidently invokes and shows it.
And I’ve just checked, ALL devtools.*.enabled strings are set on "false" and yet this die‑hard bugger doesn’t disappear.

An overall comment about shipping DevTools as an addon. We really tried but it's not possible in our current situation. Disabling devtools by default is also on the roadmap, but not being worked on at the moment.

Comment 11

[El Stellino]

As a user, and not as a developer, I can tell you why I struggled so much to kill it for good: researching online, standard users will always use keywords such as “F12” and “Developers’ Toolbox”; but no one goes and search for “devtools”, unless they are a developer (someone who already knows how to remove the thing anyway).

I am now “fixed”, thanks, but believe me, there are many users out there with the same problem.