299448 - ChatZilla should allow to bypass auto-connect of channels upon startup

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Other Applications :: ChatZilla, enhancement)

Description

[Prognathous]

I have quite a few channels configured as auto-connect, but sometimes I just
want to connect a single channel without being noticed in other channels (e.g.
when I don't have much time to chat). It would be nice if CZ would skip
auto-connect if the Shift key is held pressed.

Workaround: Load CZ using the URL irc://bogus/

Prog.

Comment 1

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Starting with just 'irc://' should also work, I think (this just opens the client view).

Apparently there is no way to check whether the shift key is being pressed, so we'll have to make onKeyDown handlers to cope with that (or something).

Comment 2

[James Ross]

irc:// does not 'work', see:
http://lxr.mozilla.org/mozilla/source/extensions/irc/xul/content/static.js#649

Comment 3

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Okay, so to make this a bit more fun, an onkeydownhandler doesn't seem to get noticed of people mashing the shift key. We'll have to create our own event (document.createEvent).

Comment 4

[James Ross]

Why would we need to create an event? Surely if we know enough to *create* the event, we know enough to *handle* it. Also, there is the small issue that if the user presses <shift> *before* the ChatZilla window opens and starts accepting events, we'd miss it. I wonder if there exists anything that would work for that...

(The Win32 API has GetKeyState, for example, which would be exactly what we want, but I'm betting that no such cross-platform thing is exposed to scripts in Mozilla.)

Comment 5

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to comment #4)
> (The Win32 API has GetKeyState, for example, which would be exactly what we
> want, but I'm betting that no such cross-platform thing is exposed to scripts
> in Mozilla.)

That was the point of comment #1. Unfortunately, I don't keep logs when at uni, but I asked bz in #developers if there was any way chrome JS could know whether the shift key was down (save events). He simply answered 'no.'

I guessed that using createEvent would gather necessary info for us and return an event object - which it doesn't, from what I can tell after quickly skimming some references while writing this.

The alternatives would be: 
* start shipping compiled code components for stuff like this. 
* make some other shortcut for this which does fire an onkeydown event (or maybe a xul <key> would work, though I am not sure about this).
* WONTFIX (maybe CANTFIX)
* Leave open and file a bug on DOM Events for sucking, mark dependancies and leave to fade into oblivion. Heck, we'd still not work on older versions of Moz/FF/Xulrunner.

Comment 6

[James Ross]

I'm going to wontfix this:
 - We (still) have no way to get key state or similar.
 - Starting via any non-client IRC URL is a simple and effective workaround.
 - There is little visible demand for this.

Comment 7

[Robert Ginda]

FWIW, we could start with a "Chatzilla will connect to your default channels in 5 seconds, press XXX or [click here] to cancel..." message.  The obvious value for XXX is probably Escape, except that that's in use to focus the input box.  Maybe ctrl/cmd Q instead.

Comment 8

[dynvec]

Although I did notice that use the irc:// won't load all my auto-connect channel and servers, I'd like an option to cancel auto-connect while it's being.  Also, having a keyboard shortcut would allow to can bypass it completely as it's faster than searching for the interface option and none or little steps would have been taken but if it's faster than 0.5 second, perhaps there should be a delay for that.