259810 - Ctrl+U works in textbox but not in textarea (when "emacs bindings" are enabled)

Status: REOPENED

(Firefox :: Keyboard Navigation, defect)

Description

[Michal Krause]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040914 Firefox/0.10
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040914 Firefox/0.10

Ctrl+U is one of shortcuts used in GTK to edit text in input fields. It's
annoying that it conflicts with View Source shortcut, but I can live with it as
Ctrl+U does the same thing as in other applications when cursor is placed in
text field or text area. But in Firefox 1.0PR, this shortcut opens source window
even if cursor is placed in text area. When placed in text field it works as
expected.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. load any HTML page with simple text input field and textarea field
2. write some text into text field and press Ctrl+U
3. write some text into textarea and press Ctrl+U

Actual Results:  
2. content of textfield is removed
3. window with page source is opened

Expected Results:  
2. content of textfield should be removed
3. line under cursor in textarea should be removed

Ctrl+U shortcut should be disabled in GTK 2.x but when it's enabled with

binding "my-text-entry" {
        bind "<ctrl>u" { "delete-from-cursor" (paragraphs, -1) }
}
class "GtkEntry" binding "my-text-entry"

in ~/.gtkrc-2.0, I thing it should behave consistently.

Comment 1

[Adam Hauner]

Covex: Could you reproduce in FF 1.0?

Comment 2

[Paul]

I'm getting the same thing. CRTL-W doesn't work either in text areas.

Comment 3

[Eric Shattow]

i'm running FireFox 1.0preview release, and this is the single most annoying
thing i have run into.

standard *nix style escapes like...

^A (move text selection cursor to end of text line)
^E (move text selection cursor to beginning of text line)
^U (delete all text from text selection cursor to beginning of line)

...are NOT to be messed with for a GNU/Linux platform.  FireFox 0.9.3 handled
these perfectly.

^U is most often used to erase a password that has been mis-typed, and in the
case of FireFox 0.8 and prior, I use it constantly to clear the URL location bar
without  selecting text.  selecting text with my mouse or other wise would
overwrite whatever i have in my X11 cut selection buffers, hampering any
productivity I might hope to acheive with select-to-copy/middle-button-paste
conventions.

I've noticed that ^A has been mapped to "select all" ala macintosh. that's
really sad. i will explain why at the end of this comment. (**)

Also, - while we're at it - the behavior of the 'backspace' key has changed for
FireFox 1.0preview release in an undesirable way. Current behavior is to go back
in browser history, while the previous (and correct) behavior was to delete the
last character you typed from the Find-As-You-Type search string. The
Find-As-You-Type function needs to be able to allow the user to have use of the
backspace key to modify the search query. "Escape" key cancels the query, so i
don't see the problem of the following logic to be implemented...

IF Find-As-You-Type ACTIVE
THEN
backspace key does not modify browser history
backspace key modifies Find-As-You-Type buffer
END-IF

**Now, a few words about why i think this whole situation is sad...

A) Mozilla website is pimping the Firefox product on the home page in <a
href=http://www.mozilla.org/images/t_firefox_pr.gif>BIG BOLD GRAPHIC LETTERS</a>
B) latest versions of said pimped product have *no* migration from earlier
versions of product[1]
C) keyboard shortcuts inconsistent with the platform
D) "preview" versions have more critical bugs than "beta" versions
E) no visible option to change the keyboard shortcut mappings[2]

[1] by now it's pretty well known that migration from (firefox 0.9.3 -> firefox
1.0preview release / thunderbird 0.7 -> thunderbird 0.8) are so horribly broken
as to be considered nonfunctional and just NOT THERE.   a lot of people lost all
their bookmarks/passwords/younameit with respect to firefox, and many more loast
all their email/addressbook/spamdata with repsect to thunderbird.  why are there
no import functions for earlier versions of each product?   sure, import from
mozilla web browser, but not mozilla thunderbird/firefox? that's crazy.  
there's no way that should ever be reccomended over Mozilla Web browser on the
Mozilla website.

[2] uhhh hello? GNU/Linux is -not- Macintosh OSX.   so please stop ramming
(CTRL+A SELECTS ALL TEXT) down our throats.  there needs to be a way to change
the keymappings, that is included with the official release of firefox, letting
users pick from "GNU/Linux (traditional)" keymappings where ^U ^A ^E work as
expected, and one for "Macintosh style" where ^X ^C ^V ^A ^L work as those users
expect.   fix the backspace key!   that's super annoying.

much of this was a rant, but understand that going from 0.9.3 -> 1.0preview I
WOULD EXPECT THE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS TO BE LEFT ALONE.  thanks guys, this firefox
is really great, but the interface needs some serious help before mozilla can
step correct in pimping it on the homesite.

Comment 4

[Jesse Ruderman]

Eric, this bug covers a specific issue and your comment is off-topic.  I suggest
searching for, voting for, and/or filing bugs on the issues you brought up (such
as backspace doing the wrong thing during FAYT) and keeping the long rants on
http://forums.mozillazine.org/ or your blog.

Comment 5

[Pavel Novak]

(In reply to comment #4)
> Eric, this bug covers a specific issue and your comment is off-topic.  I suggest
> searching for, voting for, and/or filing bugs on the issues you brought up (such
> as backspace doing the wrong thing during FAYT) and keeping the long rants on
> http://forums.mozillazine.org/ or your blog.

Jesse, in my point of view Eric's comment is very "in-topic". This is big
problem FF1PR very decreases usability last version FF. So I call fix it please!

Comment 6

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

tested with 2004100111-0.101 bits on fedora core 2, with emacs-style bindings
(I'm also running gnome, fwiw). Ctrl+U to w4m in both textboxes (location bar,
single line inputs in this form, as well as the Additional Comments textarea in
this form). Ctrl+U deletes the line of text, and doesn't bring up view source
when the caret is in textboxes and textareas.

Comment 7

[matt collins]

Same problem - Firefox is no longer exhibiting standard Unix/Linuxisms with
keyboard strokes and has no obvious way to alter them. CTRL+U not working
correctly is super annoying, and worked fine on 0.9

To reiterate:

CTRL+U should delete the current line, to start position. It always has previously.

Now, locate the cursor in the location field box. Press CTRL+U. View source
opens instead of deleting the text. This is broken for a Unix platform.

Driving me crazy. Back to earlier release.

Comment 8

[matt collins]

Attachment: GTKRC file ($HOME/.gtkrc-2.0) that seems to work around CTRL+U; other keybindings are still borken (backspace working to page back, etc)

This will form a workaround to get the desired behaviour; still a suspect
default though.

Comment 9

[Eric Shattow]

trying out the Attachment "GTKRC file ($HOME/.gtkrc-2.0)" does not work here.
firefox brings up 'view source' window on CTRL+U event. thanks for trying, matt,
but it just doesn't seem to do anything and has gaim-specific bindings that are
not relevent to mozilla.   the relevent line is:

gtk-key-theme-name = "Emacs"

Comment 10

[matt collins]

Yeah, the additional comments were a different bug in Firefox ;/ I uploaded the
file with the intent of editing it afterwards, and then found firefox wouldnt
let me edit the contents of textarea fields any more - double crazy making and I
gave up at that point. nonetheless, the emacs mode GTK setting has made CTRL+U
work here, although other problems, such as backspace being 'back' are still
there; the core problem is Firefox is overriding basic OS functionality with its
default hotkeys. Sorry it didnt help you ;/ It could be many things though , at
that stage, I guess - a difference in GTK libraries, firefox builds, etc, etc.

Comment 11

[Ali Ebrahim]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 189615 ***

Comment 12

[Jesse Ruderman]

*** Bug 265753 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 13

[Jesse Ruderman]

This is not a dup of bug 189615.  Fixing bug 189615 (making the emacs bindings
and browser shortcuts not overlap at all) would fix this bug, but that's
irrelevant because bug 189615 will probably not be fixed.

Comment 14

[Rachel Rawlings]

Failure to adhere to standard *ix behavior which was respected in previous
Mozilla versions is, imho, a showstopper bug. I'm willing to grin sheepishly at
myself when I attempt to use Ctrl-U on a Windows or Mac box, but not on a Linux
machine.

(This is actually the second attempt to submit this comment, because I tried to
use Ctrl-W to correct a misspelled word. Doh, and grrr....)

Comment 15

[José Jeria]

*** Bug 272739 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 16

[Daemon]

 This problem is not specific for Linux, it also exists in FreeBSD for Firefox
starting from 1.0PR and to 1.0_3-release. Ctrl-U invokes "Page Source" in any
part of Firefox, regardless of textfield, textarea, etc. being in focus, Ctrl-W
closes Firefox.
 And it is _really_ annoying...

Comment 17

[kevin tomasek]

it seems that comment on this was dec of last year, and it is still open.

using Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050317 Firefox/1.0.2

this problem still persists.

comment #7 from matt colins is exactly the point.  unixisms need to remain.  on
the pc if i hit ctrl-u too bad for me.  but in unix world,  i expect that all
the unix command line features to work in URL text window. the ones most often
used by me are ctrl-a, ctrl-e, ctrl-w, ctrl-u (begin of line, end of line,
delete word and delete line).

the lack of this feature has me killing firefox after a couple of ctrl-u's and
falling back to mozilla in which this feature does work.

thanks.

Comment 18

[Eric Shattow]

AFAIK the 'backspace' behavior has been fixed.  other conventions are broken and
have not been fixed. bashisms need to be reinstated in the context of the
location bar.

Pavel is my homeboy.

Comment 19

[Bradley Dean]

No major comments to add other than that having windows opening on me when I try
to use the clear-line shortcut (ctrl-u) is driving me crazy and spoiling the
usability of mozilla and firefox.

If other software conventions are being adopted to entice users of other
browsers there should at least be a way to configure the behaviour of the
browser so that they don't clobber existing conventions.

That said - I would suspect that almost all *nix based users are surprised by
the 'source window' appearing for ctrl-u so maybe this behaviour should be
operating system sensitive (as has already been suggested).

Comment 20

[Thomas Mack]

Ctrl-U, Ctrl-W, Ctrl-K etc. don't work, but the Windows keys do work. So 
firefox imposes Windows behaviour here to the Unix users. There is no sense in 
it, as it would be of no sense to impose Unix behaviour to the Windows version 
by removing standard Windows shortcuts. What about Ctrl-V opening a new tab or 
something like this???? 
 
Even in the current 1.0.7 version, this behaviour has not been fixed: is 
firefox slowly trying to drop Unix support? 
 
Very annoying... 

Comment 21

[David Bolter [:davidb] (NeedInfo me for attention)]

Mass un-assigning bugs assigned to Aaron.

Comment 22

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Reporter, are you still seeing this issue with Firefox 3.6.9 or later in safe mode? If not, please close. These links can help you in your testing.
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Safe+Mode
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles

Comment 23

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field for this bug is relatively low, S3. However, the bug has 10 votes.
:dao, could you consider increasing the bug severity?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 24

[BugBot (nomail) [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The last needinfo from me was triggered in error by recent activity on the bug. I'm clearing the needinfo since this is a very old bug and I don't know if it's still relevant.