211247 - [Mac] Support Cmd+Shift+Left/Right to switch tabs

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Aaron Deutsch]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624

Last build of Mo is great, but not as usable as Safari for keyboard-shortcut
fiends. 

Since Apple got to choose the standard by doing it first, the Mozilla team can
feel safe in using "Cmd-Shift-right/left arrow" to do it.



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Comment 1

[louis bennett]

for reference:

safari uses command - shift - left arrow / right arrow
mozilla uses control - page up / page down
camino uses command - shift - { / }

currently, mozilla uses safari's shortcut for selecting a line of text within
text widgets (in mac os x).

Comment 2

[Aaron Deutsch]

Thank you, this is helpful and a relief to see this wasn't passed over completely.

The way I discovered Safari's shortcut is the commands are shown in the pull down menu "Window" 
which says: 

-----
Select Next Tab -- (symbols for) Cmd-Shift-Right Arrow
Select Prev Tab --  (symbols for) Cmd-Shift-Right Arrow
-----


I'm willing to be wrong again if Mozilla has imbedded these instructions somewhere in the browser 
but damned if I can find them.

Why hide such a great feature?

Comment 3

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

It's not exactly hidden; that's the standard shortcut for switching pages in
many paged applications (eg spreadsheets)...

Comment 4

[louis bennett]

it should, however, either be noted in mozilla's help file (where switching tabs
isn't covered) or be included in the window menu, a la camino and safari.

Comment 5

[Aaron Deutsch]

I *strongly* agree with Louis. Placement in the "window" menu will get the feature used more.

Developers retain a vast knowledge of shortcuts for multiple platforms and browsers. The common 
user does not, and those among them that try (QuarkXPress users, for example) want the program 
to help them find their commonly used/desired shortcuts by placing them right where they're 
expected and accessible for use straight away. The easier it is for them to find features, the more 
useful your app becomes. 

How many users are going to go to Bugzilla here to find the answer to this issue (and take up an 
engineer's valuable time?)

On that note, I'll close for now. Thanks for the attention - I'll pass the word about this feature 
(almost every computer user I know wants this) and check back to see what the group decides. 

Comment 6

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

.

Comment 7

[Aaron Leventhal]

We do support Ctrl+PgUp/PgDn on Mac.

Brade, do you want to assign this to someone? It's not a bad idea to support the
same keyset for this as Safari.

Resummarizing.

Comment 8

[Aaron Deutsch]

Thanks Aaron (Leventhal). Here is one last note that may reinforce this:

The "page up" and "page down" buttons on PowerBooks and iBooks require you to push the Fn key 
to activate (shared with up and down buttons). Therefore, these users must: 

Fn-Ctrl-up or down key to swtich tabs.

Cheers.

Comment 9

[Bjarne D Mathiesen]

MultiZilla implements this functionality using the [Apple]/[Cmd] key instead of
the [ctrl] key. Unfortunately, at the time of writing this functionality is
broken in MultiZilla 1.5.0.2 - works in 1.4.0.4

Comment 10

[louis bennett]

*** Bug 147098 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 11

[R.K.Aa.]

*** Bug 283969 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***