1710399 - Thunderbird should use same access keys as Firefox for link context menu items

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[me]

Attachment: Thunderbird link context menu

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/78.0

Steps to reproduce:

Right click a link or an email address on Firefox and then Thunderbird

Actual results:

This is how the Firefox menu looks (screenshot attached)

Open Link in New Tab
Open Link in New Window
Save Link as...
Copy Link

Compared to how the menu looks like in Thunderbird (screenshot attached):

Open Link In Browser
Select All
Copy Link Location
Save Link As...

Expected results:

The context menu shortcuts on Firefox and Thunderbird should match. Like many other users, I use both Firefox and Thunderbird as my primary browser and mail client. The context menu when you right click a link in either of these apps does similar things, but uses different keyboard shortcuts.

1. The shortcut for copying a link is: C on Thunderbird, and L on Firefox. This used to be A on Firefox, and I'm hoping #1701324 fixes this, and we get A everywhere.
2. The shortcut for saving a link is: k on Thunderbird and L on Firefox.

A similar mismatch also exists when you right click on an email address. The shortcut to copy an email address is E on Thunderbird and L on Firefox.

All of this should be consistent, so we only have one shortcut to copy a link, irrespective of whether it is an email address or something else.

Comment 1

[me]

Attachment: Firefox Link context menu

Comment 2

[me]

Attachment: Firefox Email context menu

Comment 3

[me]

Attachment: Thunderbird email context menu

Comment 4

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

A bit of a moving target because Firefox has just changed the menu labels (and hence some access keys) in bug 1690561, but apparently some of the changes are not yet in Thunderbird, PLUS they have reverted some changes in bug 1697682, PLUS there are user complaints in bug 1701324 about breaking their muscle memory by changing popular "Copy Link Location" access key from "A" to "L" (there's even an addon to rectify that).

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

And we have avoided such requests in the past.

Comment 6

[CronoCat]

PLUS there are user complaints in bug 1701324 about breaking their muscle memory by changing popular "Copy Link Location" access key from "A" to "L" (there's even an addon to rectify that)

To be clear, the discussions on bug 1701324 revolved around (right) handedness at least as much as strict love of accesskey "A" specifically. As per the discussion, the addon – at least in its current form – unfortunately doesn't address the problem for Linux users who expect the primary-selection clipboard to be updated, as opposed to the clipboard-selection clipboard. (I'm not sure whether that's possible for an addon to implement or not.)

Anyways, I'd be interested to see these differences reconciled as well.