286892 - Keyboard shortcut conflict with KDE (K Desktop Environment): Ctrl+Tab

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Keyboard Navigation, defect)

Description

[Vlad C.]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041001 Firefox/0.10.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20041001 Firefox/0.10.1

There is a keyboard shortcut conflict between KDE and Mozilla Firefox when
typing Ctrl+Tab. In KDE, Ctrl+Tab walks through the desktop list while in
Mozilla Firefox Ctrl+Tab walks through tabs. When Mozilla Firefox is run under
KDE, the KDE action takes precedence (desktops are changed, but Firefox tabs are
not).

I have filed this bug with KDE eariler, but it seems unlikely that KDE
developers will change the Ctrl+Tab default action. (Please see
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=101932)

A workarond is to use Ctrl+PageUp and Ctrl+PageDown to walk through Firefox tabs
when using KDE. However, it is likely that Winodws/GNOME users who regularly use
Ctrl+Tab to walk through tabs will be confused when the same command has
different effects in KDE. 

I'm not sure what is the best way around this is. Perhaps Firefox should
encourage the use of Ctrl+PageUp and Ctrl+PageDown in all its documentation
and/or eventually do away with Ctrl+Tab in order to ease the transition of
Windows Firefox users to KDE.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Start Firefox in KDE
2.Open up multiple tabs
3.Try to use Ctrl+Tab to walk through the Firefox tabs

Actual Results:  
The user will walk through KDE desktops.

Expected Results:  
The user should walk through Firefox tabs.

Comment 1

[Aaron Leventhal]

> Perhaps Firefox should encourage the use of Ctrl+PageUp and Ctrl+PageDown in all 
> its documentation and/or eventually do away with Ctrl+Tab in order to ease the 
> transition of Windows Firefox users to KDE.
That will definitely be unpopular. We actually used to only support
Ctrl+PageUp/PageDown for switch tabs and got a *lot* of complaints. Ctrl+tab is
already a well known shorcut for switching tabs and people expect it to work.

What is the standard tab switching shortcut in dialogs on KDE? If that's
Ctrl+PageUp/PageDown then I fail to see a problem with our current behavior,
except perhaps that we mention Ctrl+Tab as a tab switching shortcut in the
keyboard help.

Comment 2

[Vlad C.]

At least in Konqueror, the default for switching tabs is Ctrl+[ and Ctrl+]. I
think this is less intuitive than the Firefox defaults of Ctrl+Tab /
Ctrl+Shift+tab or Ctrl+PageUp / Ctrl+PageDown.

In view of the fact that people complained when Ctrl+Tab was not supported, I
guess the status quo is the best that can be done. There might even be a hidden
benefit in that a Windows Firefox user who tries Ctrl+Tab in KDE will discover
how to switch desktops (or that there even are such things as separate desktops :)

If there are no more comments in the next few days, I'll take the liberty to
mark the bug I reported as Resolved, Invalid. Thanks for your help!