1674083 - Library shortcut has been changed to Bookmarks Toolbar shortcut

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[Chris Morgan]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:84.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/84.0

Steps to reproduce:

Press Ctrl+Shift+B.

Actual results:

The bookmarks toolbar opens or closes.

Expected results:

Just what has always happened: Bookmarks → Show All Bookmarks (which has now been relegated to Ctrl+Shift+O).

I extremely strongly dislike this change. I can’t imagine many people ever want to toggle bookmarks toolbar visibility, so I simply don’t think it should have a keyboard shortcut; and when you want want to look at all your bookmarks, Ctrl+B and Ctrl+Shift+B are the two obvious shortcuts, and what have always been used; Ctrl+Shift+O is not discoverable.

(Personal background: I hate the bookmarks toolbar and have always had it disabled. I’ve just had to disable it again with these recent changes that make it default to showing on new tabs, but problems with that are another matter that I’ll file separately.)

This is a change from the last few days.

Comment 1

[Gingerbread Man]

You can enter about:config into the address bar and set browser.toolbars.bookmarks.2h2020 to false. It's unclear if this preference is slated for removal in the future.

Comment 2

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

(In reply to Gingerbread Man from comment #1)

You can enter about:config into the address bar and set browser.toolbars.bookmarks.2h2020 to false. It's unclear if this preference is slated for removal in the future.

all the feature preferences are removed, either the change is released or discarded, but the prefs go away.

Comment 3

[:Gijs (he/him)]

As you can see from bug 1328637 and all the dupes,

I can’t imagine many people ever want to toggle bookmarks toolbar visibility

this turns out not to be the case - lots of people do want to toggle it.

We're unlikely to be reverting this change. I understand that muscle memory is a pain, but I promise you that you can adjust to the new shortcut.

Ctrl+Shift+O is not discoverable.

It's discoverable the same way as other shortcuts: it's listed next to the menu entries to which it applies. We'll update the documentation in due course.

Comment 4

[Chris Morgan]

I’m still distressed by this, because I feel that the bookmarks manager is steadily being hidden further and further away.

But evidently far more people are wanting to use the bookmarks toolbar in this way than I imagined, which feels bizarre given that I’d have expected keyboard shortcut users to be the ones that would happily type into the address bar, but it is what it is and these changes clearly weren’t made lightly. I’d have said “maybe showing the bookmarks toolbar on new tabs only will satisfy these people”, but per bug 1674090 I’m not happy with that functionality as it stands anyway.

I should have said guessable rather than discoverable.

Thanks for the info.

Comment 5

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

I understand that muscle memory is a pain, but I promise you that you can adjust to the new shortcut.

I suppose I'd have to try this for a while, but pure muscle memory effects apart, Ctrl + Shift + O is more awkward to operate single-handedly – with Ctrl + Shift + B I can manage that with my left hand only while keeping the other hand on the mouse, with Ctrl + Shift + O I either need to somewhat awkwardly reach over to the other half of the keyboard, or lift the other hand off the mouse after all.

Comment 6

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Jan Henning [:JanH] from comment #5)

I understand that muscle memory is a pain, but I promise you that you can adjust to the new shortcut.

I suppose I'd have to try this for a while, but pure muscle memory effects apart, Ctrl + Shift + O is more awkward to operate single-handedly – with Ctrl + Shift + B I can manage that with my left hand only while keeping the other hand on the mouse, with Ctrl + Shift + O I either need to somewhat awkwardly reach over to the other half of the keyboard, or lift the other hand off the mouse after all.

Maybe it's all the years of piano study I did as a kid, but if you really don't want to use your right hand but you have a right-side ctrl key, you can hit ctrl+shift with your left thumb (and index, if you want), and O with any of your other fingers, right? ;-)

More seriously, although I'm sympathetic that this requires more effort if you don't want to use your right hand, we can't realistically reduce our already small available shortcut space to also discount all letters on the right-hand-side of the keyboard - Ctrl-P prints, and always has, Ctrl-L focuses the location bar, etc. This shortcut has been in use on Linux (ie O instead of B) for many, many years now.

I'd be a lot more curious why you find yourself needing the library shortcut that often that it's a pain to take your hand off your mouse. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing you'd need to bring up all that frequently (or, conversely, that you don't then just leave open and alt-tab to)? Improvements to the library are a possible part of investment in the near-ish future so I'm curious what you find yourself doing with it... if you feel like sharing you can email me to avoid moving this bug further off-topic - can't promise to implement your every wish of course, but I'm definitely curious. :-)

Comment 7

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

It was just something I noticed on top, but in the end it's true that I don't use the library quite that often after all.

There are a few other shortcuts where losing that property would be definitively very painful (even if it originally might have come about only through a lucky coincidence), but you're right that in the end the bookmarks library probably isn't one of them.

(In reply to :Gijs (he/him) from comment #6)

Maybe it's all the years of piano study I did as a kid, but if you really don't want to use your right hand but you have a right-side ctrl key, you can hit ctrl+shift with your left thumb (and index, if you want), and O with any of your other fingers, right? ;-)

Well yes, I guess I can, but like I said I'd still have to move the hand over to the other half of the keyboard – but as mentioned above, I'll concede that the library isn't one of the shortcuts where easy one-handed operation needs to be a top priority (although it's interesting that it's only through this shortcut change that I've really consciously noticed this benefit of shortcuts sitting in the left half of the keyboard).

Comment 8

[Thomas Wolff]

set browser.toolbars.bookmarks.2h2020 to false.

This does not work.

This change rebuffed many users (https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/kdomei/did_mozilla_change_the_keyboard_shortcut_to_open/).
It came unannounced, undocumented initially, still poorly documented, and without any option of remedy (like shortcut redefinition).
So why is this issue closed already?
One more incident of ignorance towards expert users, in a poor history of bad bookmarks management support. Shame on Mozilla.

Comment 9

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Thomas Wolff from comment #8)

set browser.toolbars.bookmarks.2h2020 to false.

This does not work.

Not anymore, no. This was changed in bug 1675549 (fixed some time after the comment you quoted was written), because while it was behind a pref, users on the beta release would have the shortcut change back and forth every 2 weeks, which was obviously even worse than the change you're unhappy about.

This change rebuffed many users (https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/kdomei/did_mozilla_change_the_keyboard_shortcut_to_open/).

It was also requested by many users, see bug 1328637 and all its duplicates.

It came unannounced,

I apologize for this oversight, and I agree this should have been in the release notes.

undocumented initially,

It's listed in the menubar menu's item for "show all bookmarks", the same item in the library menu's bookmarks item, the top and bottom "all bookmarks" items in the bookmarks toolbar menu button if you use that - and was documented on support.mozilla.org from December 1st, https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/keyboard-shortcuts-perform-firefox-tasks-quickly/revision/211661 - several weeks before the general release of Firefox 84.

still poorly documented,

I'm genuinely not sure what you mean.

and without any option of remedy (like shortcut redefinition).

Firefox and the other Mozilla apps have never had builtin shortcut redefinition support, and adding it is a separate bug (and a very large amount of work) - bug 588710. It's not realistic to expect us to never change or add/remove any shortcuts just in case some people don't like them, until shortcut customization is added.

So why is this issue closed already?

Because we won't change it back - hence "won't fix".

Comment 10

[Thomas Wolff]

I'm not going to play ping-pong here but I consider it unacceptable that you closed this issue, again, as the change came like a hammer to many users and there is still no workaround available.
Please reopoen until there is a workaround for this bug, which it is.