22184 - [RFE] Keyboard accelerator to open sidebar

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Core :: DOM: UI Events & Focus Handling, enhancement, P2)

Description

[Neil Marshall]

How about using the `~ (Tilde) key to toggle the sidebar.
The reason I suggest this key is because many computer games are using it to
bring down the consol (Which is similar to the sidebar)  Someone else suggested
F9 which is apparently a similar key in homesite (Never used it before).

If the side bar isn't checked in the pulldown menu it would
 toggle between fully visible and totally invisible

If the side bar is checked, in the pulldown menu it would
 toggle between open and collapsed.

Comment 1

[Eli Goldberg]

Moving to correct component.

Comment 2

[Dawn Endico]

changing assignment from [e-mail] to [e-mail]

Comment 3

[Hixie (not reading bugmail)]

[Just noticed that the activity log says that the bug was reassigned to slamm
but the assigned-to field says nobody. Reassigning to slamm. Sorry if I am wrong
to do so. If someone reassigned it to nobody (from being slamm) then there is a
bug in mozilla's activity log system, please tell terry.]

Comment 4

[Steve Lamm]

German, should we designate a key to open/close the sidebar?

Comment 5

[Paul MacQuiddy]

spam: changing qa contact on sidebar bugs from paulmac to [e-mail] 
(all 67 of them!)

Comment 6

[shuang (gone)]

set to later milestone.

Comment 7

[Jonas Nagel]

Using the Tilde (~) seems a bit problematic to me, since the Tilde ain't very
accessible for other keyboard layouts than the american one.

Also you should consider that the hotkey will be disabled whilest typing within
a textfield, location bar or similar.

Still, I support this idea and propose the Keypad * to collapse/expand the
sidebar, but maybe an or Ctrl or Ctrl-Shift combination should be considered,
such as Ctrl-Shift-S.

Comment 8

[german]

changving component to UI feedback to include proper folks for feedback/ideas.
One more concern I'd like to add is that command-tilde is being used to cycle 
through windows in 4.x and being planned to use in Mozilla also. Nonetheless the 
idea is valuable to have a sidebar open/close key. F9 is not suuch a great idea 
IMO, since many mac user won't be able to access that.

Comment 9

[german]

I propose reassigning this bug to ben, the mozilla UI owner, so he can add this
to his 'ongoing discussions bin'
BTW Keypad-* is also not very accessible through many laptop keyboards (I don't
have a keypad on mine :-(

Comment 10

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

My text editor (Allaire Homesite) uses F9 to show/hide its sidebar ;) 

Comment 11

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

what does IE use?

Comment 12

[Jesse Ruderman]

I don't know if there's a single keystroke for opening or closing the 
IE "sidebar", but Ctrl-H opens history in the sidebar and closes the sidebar if 
history is already open.  (Does Mozilla have keyboard shortcuts for opening 
specific sidebar panels?)

Comment 13

[cpratt]

If you consult the "accessibility" section in the IE help, it'll tell you 
everything you need to know about showing things in the IE "sidebar".

FWIW I think that this is an absolutely wretched idea. If you do this, you won't 
be able to type an ñ using the US-International keyboard layout (for example).

Keyboard shortcuts to show/hide the sidebar would however be useful.

Comment 14

[Ben Ruppel]

How about the escape key?

Comment 15

[Neil Marshall]

escape is used to stop a page from loading.  I wouldn't want to see the side bar 
toggle in and out as I'm trying to stop a page from loading.

Comment 16

[Blake Ross]

reassigning to me. let's reach a decision about the key to use.

Comment 17

[Karl Ove Hufthammer]

My vote is for F9.

Comment 18

[Blake Ross]

Well, F9 has two more votes than the 0 we have for anything else.  Unless 
anyone has any better ideas, that's what I'm doing.

Comment 19

[johng]

changing cc from johng to kmurray who is the new Sidebar PM

Comment 20

[Blake Ross]

Attachment: patch

Comment 21

[Ben Goodger (use ben at mozilla dot org for email)]

a=[e-mail]

Comment 22

[Peter "jag" Annema]

r=jag

Comment 23

[Blake Ross]

Fix checked in.

Comment 24

[Jesse Ruderman]

Filed bug 61215 for showing the shortcut in the view menu.

Comment 25

[shrirang khanzode]

f9 works to toggle the sidebar. Verified on all branch builds (1127)