272781 - Enable use of ESC key (on its own) to close currently open tab

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, enhancement)

Description

[Dave Martin]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041110 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041110 Firefox/1.0

ENHANCEMENT

Many current s/w products enable use of ESC to close a window or subwindow.
It's so usable - a litle flick of a finger and the things goes away.
Please implement on Firefox to close the current tab .  Thanks !

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.n/a
2.
3.

Actual Results:  
n/a

Expected Results:  
n/a

none required

Comment 1

[Jo Hermans]

That introduces the possibility for data-loss : you have to use the escape to
dismiss the find-toolbar too. And to dismiss an select-menu in HTML. And a lot
of other things too. If we would implement this, we would see a lot of bug-reports.

WONTFIX ? There's already ctrl-W

Comment 2

[Tuukka Tolvanen (sp3000)]

I don't recall offhand any application that closes a document or application
window with esc. Dialogs, certainly, but Firefox already does that. Esc
currently does Stop (as in stop loading page) so that closing a tab with that
key could be an inconvenient surprise for some people.

Comment 3

[Dave Martin]

Understand some of the comments so far.  Maybe I should get my fingers
surgically altered :-( and use Control-W !

As for existing programs - many Lotus applications including Notes, and many
Windows utilities eg control panel -> date & time closes on ESC and so do most
other similar Windows controls.

You should be using control-'break' to stop loading, not ESC .  Now maybe that
is a bug .. :-)   Just joking.  

As for using ESC to close the Search window - now I think that is not good
either.  Why not use a standard ( eg [X] button or F3 or alt-x ) instead of
inventing one and overloading a very useful key like ESC ?  (( oh I see the [X]
button is there ))  

Hence I think that your argument for not using ESC to close tabs when you are
already using it for closing FIND is weak.  Could you please reconsider.

Comment 4

[Paul van Schayck]

Esc is currently used to stop annimated gifs from moving.

Comment 5

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

Adding myself to the CC list in hopes that someone eloquent at ranting about UI
does the WONTFIX ;)

"It took me hours to wade through all the forms, but now I'm finally ready to
(get my first home loan|apply for citizenship|order a mailorder bride|buy the
perfect customized chopper). Just fill out my phone number, 555-12EscArrrrrgh!"

Comment 6

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

As a note, Esc is typically used to cancel out of dialogs.  I cannot think of
anything non-Lotus that uses Esc to close a document.

Mac expects Esc to be used to cancel a dialog or cancel/stop an action in progress.

GNOME doesn't really specify, but its pretty similarly implemented.

Windows expects ESC to Cancel the current task.

Ctrl-W is a fairly universal "close document" shortcut across platforms, Esc
isn't.  All that said, WONTFIX.

Comment 7

[Tuukka Tolvanen (sp3000)]

*** Bug 337463 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***