1712471 - List of keyboard shortcuts for Thunderbird has some mouse shortcuts and mouse-keyboard combos

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(support.mozilla.org :: Knowledge Base Content, defect)

Description

[MarjaE]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.14; rv:88.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/88.0

Steps to reproduce:

Tried to find keyboard navigation shortcuts.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/keyboard-shortcuts

Actual results:

Stumbled across a lot of keyboard-mouse combos:

Open message or folder in a new tab in the background

Middle-click the message or folder, or Right-click the message or folder, then choose Open Message in New Tab or Open in New Tab from the context menu

Open message or folder in a new tab in the foreground

Shift + Middle-click the message or folder, or
Right-click the message or folder, then hold Shift while choosing Open Message in New Tab or Open in New Tab from the context menu

It's kinda hard to do this by keyboard. Or by mouse. These are not shortcuts, and these require a working keyboard and a working mouse and the ability to use both at the same time.

Expected results:

List actual keyboard shortcuts on this page, or acknowledge the lack of shortcuts.

Comment 1

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to MarjaE from comment #0)

Hey Marja, please do not exaggerate. Again, if 4 out of 150 plus shortcuts are not to your liking, that doesn't mean that the list is "full of" wrong items.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/keyboard-shortcuts
Actual results:

Stumbled across a lot of keyboard-mouse combos:

No, not a lot.

Open message or folder in a new tab in the background

Middle-click the message or folder, or Right-click the message or folder, then choose Open Message in New Tab or Open in New Tab from the context menu

There is no dedicated keyboard shortcut for this, so I added the mouse or mixed equivalent (mouse shortcut if you wish).
The contextual action can be navigated with keyboard, but we can't add the actual keys because they are localized.
Feel free to suggest a better wording; otherwise this is wontfix for me.

Open message or folder in a new tab in the foreground

Shift + Middle-click the message or folder, or
Right-click the message or folder, then hold Shift while choosing Open Message in New Tab or Open in New Tab from the context menu

dito

It's kinda hard to do this by keyboard. Or by mouse. These are not shortcuts, and these require a working keyboard and a working mouse and the ability to use both at the same time.

Imo, mixed mouse+keyboard combos should definitely be listed here for the sake of completeness. I don't think we want to create another document for a handful of mixed-device shortcuts. Also, I don't see how this is harmful. And if you really wanted (on Windows at least), you could actually mimick mouse clicks with keyboard (on Windows, using inbuilt assistive technology).

Expected results:

List actual keyboard shortcuts on this page, or acknowledge the lack of shortcuts.

If you think that keyboard access is missing or insufficient, please file bugs.
I think the audience of the keyboard shortcuts document is not limited to keyboard-only users, and we don't promise that... ;-)

Comment 2

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

If opening messages in foreground/background tabs is not keyboard accessible, you could file a bug. Not sure how much attention that would get or deserve.

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Do we still need this bug?

Comment 4

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Wayne Mery (:wsmwk) from comment #3)

Do we still need this bug?

Not really - per my elaborate comment 1.