266394 - History/Bookmarks keyboard shortcuts are inconsistent and confusing

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Camino Graveyard :: Bookmarks, defect)

Description

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8a5) Gecko/20041025 Camino/0.8+
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8a5) Gecko/20041025 Camino/0.8+

A. Cmd-B both opens and closes the bookmarks manager; cmd-y only opens the
history pane of the bookmarks manager; one needs to cmd-b (!) or the back
button, etc., to return to the webpage.  This is asymmetrical at best and (to
me) even more counterintuitive than the bookmarks manager "wiping out" the
tabs/window one is viewing :)

B. Also, if History was the last active pane of the bookmarks manager, cmd-b
("Show All Bookmarks") opens to the history pane rather than the bookmarks pane.

C. If, in the bookmarks manager, bookmarks or something other than history is
the active pane, cmd-y opens the history pane.  One might expect cmd-b to switch
to the bookmarks pane in this case, but instead it closes the bookmarks manager.

Deep apologies for the "multiple-bugs-in-a-bug" no-no, but these seem very
tightly related imo.  Also possibly related to bug 215235? (see my comment 6 there).

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.  See above and below


Expected Results:  
A.  When invoked from the History (pane of the bookmarks manager), Cmd-y should
close the History (bookmarks manager) and return to the webpage that was being
viewed before opening the bookmarks manager or History.

B.  Even if the History was the active pane when the bookmarks manager was last
used, cmd-b should open to the *bookmarks* pane (cmd-y exists if one wanted to
open to the history pane).

C.  If the bookmarks pane of the bookmark manager is not active (e.g. history is
active), cmd-b should switch to the bookmarks pane (just as cmd-y switches to
the history pane if it is not active).  This adds symmetry with cmd-y's
internal-bookmarks-manager pane-toggle but breaks the cmd-b open/close symmetry,
so I'm not positive about whether C is a good idea or not.  But perhaps a little
more thinking about exactly how all of these commands/shortcuts are labeled,
work, and relate to each other might be useful polish--when there's time :)

Comment 1

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

I just found Josh's comment (3) in bug 229957, which is also dealing with these
issues but from a toolbar icon perspective.

That made it less clear to me whether any of my proposed fixes are less
confusing :( although I still feel pretty confident about situation/fix B.

Also (and sorry for the newbie question), in cases of related bugs like this,
would it be appropriate for me to add, e.g. Josh, to the cc list?

Comment 2

[Mike Pinkerton (not reading bugmail)]

yeah, we struggled long and hard with this one. your solution makes it such that
sometimes cmd-b hides the manager, sometimes it shows bookmarks, which i think
is even less intuitive. in the current scenario, cmd b is a toggle and always
only a toggle. It toggles the *manager* not the bookmarks menu container. cmd-y
only shows history and is not a toggle.

Comment 3

[Mike Pinkerton (not reading bugmail)]

*** Bug 278789 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 4

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

*** Bug 300239 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***