289055 - Solution for extensions battling for keyboard shortcuts

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Keyboard Navigation, enhancement)

Description

[Aaron Leventhal]

When extensions are inserted to the UI, they may be designed to use a particular
keyboard shortcut that another extension needs. It's also possible that it was
designed by an author that only considered one particular localization of the
Firefox UI, and some other localization uses that key.

We have already seen this problem with the accessibility extension. Each time
they try a new hotkey they find that another popular extension is using the same
key.

One suggestion: allow extensions to provide a list of keys for each function,
from most to least prefrered, similar to a list of fonts used in CSS. Firefox
would then assign the first available key in that list.

Comment 1

[Francis Gagné]

I see that this bug is a bit old, and that it is inactive, but I believe it's a problem: some extensions provide a shortcut that an user might use often, but some other extension use it too and receives it first. I suggest that Firefox, or any other application supporting extensions, should have a section in the Options/Preferences to assign shortcuts to commands. Extensions should be able to add their own commands in this list, and the host application's commands should appear there too. This looks a bit like how extensions can add tool bar buttons and how we can move them around. If an extension can change shortcuts assignments manually, the user should be warned about it. Also, maybe the commands could be grouped by extension, and adding the possibility to put icons in the tree would make it more inviting. Such a feature would make extensions authors less worried about finding unused shortcuts, which are becoming more rare as new extensions appear.

Comment 2

[BoffinBrain]

Voting for this bug.  I'd be interested if there are any other suggestions in bugs similar to this one.

comment #0 is a nice silent approach to handling shortcut conflicts.  But as mentioned above, the order in which the extensions load is important.  Some way to to change their priority would be required for this to be useful.

comment #1 is a good way to make these shortcuts viewable to the user.  Changing shortcuts should definitely be a standard feature, as it is in most programs.  I'd prefer this option.

Would like to know what the progress is regarding such feature enhancements.  :)

Comment 3

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

I am definitely not the droid this bug is looking for.