Open Bug 1667950 Opened 5 years ago Updated 3 years ago

Create keyboard shortcuts to directly open the system print dialog

Categories

(Toolkit :: Printing, enhancement, P1)

Product:
Toolkit
Component:
Printing
Type:
enhancement

Tracking

()

People

(Reporter: jwatt, Unassigned)

References

Details

(Whiteboard: [print2020_v90] [old-ui-] )

A minority of our users will likely prefer to print directly using the system print dialog, perhaps because they know they need to adjust settings that are only available there, or because it's faster, or just because they prefer it. To make their lives easier we should probably have some shortcut keys for that to allow skipping the preview.

Whiteboard: [print2020_v83][old-ui-] → [print2020_v84][old-ui-]
Whiteboard: [print2020_v84][old-ui-] → [print2020_v85] [old-ui-]

(Moving bugs to 86, part 1.)

Whiteboard: [print2020_v85] [old-ui-] → [print2020_v86][old-ui-]

Moving things to 88, cause we're mostly on Proton these days…

Whiteboard: [print2020_v86][old-ui-] → [print2020_v88] [old-ui-]
Whiteboard: [print2020_v88] [old-ui-] → [print2020_v90] [old-ui-]

Not having these shortcuts is possibly the number one printing complaint on SUMO, so bumping this to P1 for now to keep it visible (frontend folks, change as appropriate, of course).

Priority: P3 → P1

Or because the new print modal is a migraine trigger. I've been using the about:config fix to avoid it, but the setting is scheduled for deletion, so I've had to block any further updates.

We are getting quite a bit of feedback on SUMO from Firefox 97 users that people find it faster to directly launch the system print dialog. In some cases this is due to needing to assign paper trays or because Firefox doesn't properly detect color support. While those issues are sorted, it would be very helpful to have a way to bypass the preview.

Some users also mentioned that Firefox lacks parity with Chrome/Edge on Windows where those browsers can call the system dialog with Ctrl+Shift+P. (While that combination is not available in Firefox, a different combination could be assigned.)

Depends on: 1712104

To me the internet seems full of people searching for a way to skip the new modal print dialog since print.tab_modal.enabled=False has been removed. Here are some examples:

I am one of these users as well and find this behavior so annoying I, like others, think about going back to Firefox ESR because of this.

Reasons to prefer to go to the system print dialog seem to be:

  • Printing on labels or selecting paper trays
  • Printing only selected text
  • Restricting the pages to print (e.g., from page 2 to 4)
  • Long waiting times (several seconds)
  • Expecting the same familiar print dialog on all applications on your computer

I support the notion to add a shortcut to directly open the system print dialog. (Or even better a setting as has been removed recently.)

SInce Ctrl+Shift+P is already in user for opening a private window: Which shortcut is free and would be a good candidate?

In bug 1712104 I should shortly land a pref to allow users to have Ctrl+P open the system print dialog instead of the tab-modal print dialog. I'm not sure if the frontend/UX team have decided on shortcuts though. Mark, any thoughts?

Flags: needinfo?(mstriemer)

(In reply to vollkorn from comment #6)

Reasons to prefer to go to the system print dialog seem to be:

  • Printing on labels or selecting paper trays

We're certainly missing this

  • Printing only selected text
  • Restricting the pages to print (e.g., from page 2 to 4)

These are both supported in the Ctrl+P print dialog. Is there something about them that doesn't work for you?

  • Long waiting times (several seconds)

Is this is worse with the new vs the old dialog? I recall having to wait for the old dialog to start, I didn't think it got much worse (in fact it should be off main thread now so it doesn't lock Firefox entirely while it's talking to the printer)

  • Expecting the same familiar print dialog on all applications on your computer

Fair, I'd just note that on Windows at least custom dialogs seem fairly prevalent, so not all users would necessarily feel the current dialog isn't familiar

I support the notion to add a shortcut to directly open the system print dialog. (Or even better a setting as has been removed recently.)

SInce Ctrl+Shift+P is already in user for opening a private window: Which shortcut is free and would be a good candidate?

Unsure on the correct shortcut. Ctrl+Alt+P/Cmd+Alt+P seems reasonable, might be worth looking at what's more common between Cmd+Alt and Cmd+Ctrl for macOS

Flags: needinfo?(mstriemer)

Another crucial thing, which is missing from the cmd+P dialogue, is the menu where one can add custom workflows: https://i.stack.imgur.com/PmifK.png

To get this back, there really should to be a way to make the system print dialogue default

Another thing is that the Firefox dialogue has a scrolling print preview. It's hard to avoid accidental scrolling, and if you have certain neuro issues, it's hard to avoid migraines from one element scrolling in front of or alongside another. It is possible to block the print preview using userChrome.css.

Hi All, no discussion of "why it would be helpful to bypass the preview" is needed in this bug. This bug already presupposes that sometimes people will want to bypass the preview by using an alternate keyboard shortcut.

As mentioned earlier, bug 1712104 is about creating an about:config preference that would allow users to always skip the preview when you use the regular keyboard shortcut. That one probably will be done first.

That would address these points:

(In reply to vollkorn from comment #6)

I support the notion to add a shortcut to directly open the system print dialog. (Or even better a setting as has been removed recently.)

(In reply to sam.carter8 from comment #9)

To get this back, there really should to be a way to make the system print dialogue default

(In reply to Jonathan Watt [:jwatt] from comment #7)

In bug 1712104 I should shortly land a pref to allow users to have Ctrl+P open the system print dialog instead of the tab-modal print dialog. I'm not sure if the frontend/UX team have decided on shortcuts though. Mark, any thoughts?

That's great, I wasn't aware of this bug. Thanks for the info, I'll most likely use it, once it is implemented.

Still, I think adopting a similar behavior like Chrome or Edge, where a user can choose to sometimes skip the modal print dialog by using a certain shortcut, would be beneficial. Therefore, I thought a little about which shortcut would be a candidate.

I think a modification of Ctrl+P would be great, but Ctrl+Shift+P is already taken for private window. I would not switch around established shortcuts. What about using Alt in shortcuts? Ctrl+Alt+P or Alt+P? Alt seems to me to be rarely used. Any reason for that?

(In reply to Mark Striemer [:mstriemer] from comment #8)

(In reply to vollkorn from comment #6)

  • Printing only selected text
  • Restricting the pages to print (e.g., from page 2 to 4)

These are both supported in the Ctrl+P print dialog. Is there something about them that doesn't work for you?

Indeed, they are. I must confess that I didn't verify these claims, but I didn't find these features readily available.

The button to only print selected text only shows up when you actually have text selected. In the GTK print dialog this option is always shown and just grayed out when no text is selected. This allows a user to learn that selecting text is an option. I prefer the consistency of the UI by the GTK behavior.

For the pages feature, a user has to do a few more clicks for it to show up. It's hidden behind a drop down box. I can understand that many users just miss the possibility to do so. In the GTK dialog it's in plain sight.

  • Long waiting times (several seconds)

Is this is worse with the new vs the old dialog? I recall having to wait for the old dialog to start, I didn't think it got much worse (in fact it should be off main thread now so it doesn't lock Firefox entirely while it's talking to the printer)

I stopped it for my system. FF 99.0 on Ubuntu 20.04.4. AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 4750U (quite new and fast). Average of a couple of different pages (listed below).

Modal Print Dialog: 0.96 seconds
System Print Dialog: 0.16 seconds (so quick, I hardly manage to tap a timer)

The difference might not seem much, but it is crossing a limit of recognition. For example, see this article explaining this: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/response-times-3-important-limits/

So, yeah, I think the criticism of long loading times is valid, though "several seconds" might not be accurate for most users.

I support the notion to add a shortcut to directly open the system print dialog. (Or even better a setting as has been removed recently.)

SInce Ctrl+Shift+P is already in user for opening a private window: Which shortcut is free and would be a good candidate?

Unsure on the correct shortcut. Ctrl+Alt+P/Cmd+Alt+P seems reasonable, might be worth looking at what's more common between Cmd+Alt and Cmd+Ctrl for macOS

Ah, great, I had a similar idea. I like it.

I have an implementation request: could the keyboard shortcut do the opposite of the default? What I mean is:

If the new print.prefer_system_dialog preference of bug 1712104 is false (default value), and Firefox therefore always shows the preview, the print-special shortcut would bypass the preview instead.

But if the new print.prefer_system_dialog preference has been toggled to true, and Firefox therefore always bypasses the preview, the print-special shortcut would show the preview instead.

That would give users of the new preference the opportunity to address scaling and header/footer issues without going back to about:config to toggle the new preference (or manually edit saved values for their printer).

If there is an intention to provide access to "Page Setup" in some other way, then this would be less relevant, but I'm not aware of one.

(I don't have an opinion on what should happen if the preference has been toggled by an enterprise policy.)

You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.