356177 - [Mac] Control+left does not work (should go to beginning of line)

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Keyboard Navigation, defect)

Description

[Jeff]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060909 Firefox/1.5.0.7
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) Gecko/20060909 Firefox/1.5.0.7

With Mac to get to the beginning of a typed line (on a Windows machine it would be "home") you use the CNTRL and Back Arrow key, it does not work in Firefox. It is a bit annoying to have to use the back arrow through the whole line of text.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.type text
2.have cursor at the end of the text line
3.press the CNTRL key
4.press the Back Arrow key
Actual Results:  
1.type text
2.have cursor at the end of the text line
3.press the CNTRL key
4.press the Back Arrow key
5.Cursor remains at the end of text

Expected Results:  
1.type text
2.have cursor at the end of the text line
3.press the CNTRL key
4.press the Back Arrow key
5.Cursor should move to beginning of text

Known Mac keyboard shortcut

Comment 1

[Jo Hermans]

Firefox uses the Home key. See also bug 289384.

Comment 2

[Jeff]

Tried the "Home" key and that does not bring me to the beginning of the line of text on Firefox 1.5.0.7, but I did find that the "Apple" key and the Back arrow will work. Partially resolved?

Comment 3

[Jesse Ruderman]

Some apps use Ctrl+Left for going to the beginning of the line, and some apps use Cmd+left instead.  I don't know why.

* Safari, Smultron, TextEdit, Colloquy use both.

* TextWrangler uses Cmd+left (Ctrl+left scrolls).

* Adium uses Ctrl+left (Cmd+left switches tabs).

And just to confuse you more, Terminal.app supports neither, but does support Ctrl+A / Ctrl+E and Shift+Home / Shift+End.

Comment 4

[John]

I believe the reason is that Spaces uses control+arrow to move between the different spaces.  As a result the system intercepts the ctrl+arrow keystroke before it gets to the application.

Spaces can be disabled, but the system still seems to intercept the keystroke while in Firefox.

I have even tried changing the setting for spaces to use Command arrow and it still doesn't let the keystroke through.  The error beep occurs instead.
Mac OS X 10.5.4 and now 10.5.5.  Firefox 3.0.2.

In 10.5.x safari and textedit only respond to ctrl+arrows when spaces is disabled.  Otherwise Cmd+arrow does what ctrl+arrow is expected to do. Regardless of the state of Spaces.

This problem seems to vary by site.  
For example in this bug report comments window the cmd+arrow keys work as Ctrl+arrow keys are expected to work.  However in Gmail's compose window the Cmd+up or Cmd+down work properly while the Cmd+left and Cmd+right do not.

When Spaces is disabled Ctrl+arrow gives a beep regardless of which page I try the keystroke in.

I hope this helps.

Comment 5

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

Alex: when you get a second, can you confirm if this is a bug, and if so, suggest what we should do here in terms of platform parity? If you conclude that this isn't needed for parity, please resolve as INVALID.

Comment 6

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

>Alex: when you get a second, can you confirm if this is a bug, and if so,
>suggest what we should do here in terms of platform parity?

yeah, we should be matching text field behavior for OS X here in the event that Spaces is disabled.  We did fix the up and down arrow keys being used to travel to the start an end of the text field, but if people have muscle memory for using control+arrow, they are going to be annoyed that it doesn't work.

Comment 7

[ftolsson]

I would argue the problem is cmd+arrow DOES do something, only the wrong thing.

If in a text form, then:

* cmd+left SHOULD move cursor to start of line, but DOES back the browser to previous page.
* cmd+shift+left SHOULD move cursor to start of line AND selecting all text between here and there, but DOES load the Home/Start web page.

As many pages doesn't remember a form's contents when leaving the page and returning to it, mistakenly leaving the page (because expecting to move the cursor but instead loading another page) will cause everything written in the form (say, an entire email...!) to be lost.

About muscle memory, I think everyone using a MacBook or the small wireless keyboard (which both lack HOME and END keys) will be doing this by sheer reflex when editing text -- and with the loss of all entered text as a result.

BTW, I think this bug is also filed as #289384...?

Comment 8

[Jesse Ruderman]

Yes, the complaint in comment 7 sounds like bug 289384.  It's not the same as this bug, which is about Ctrl (not Cmd) and applies to normal page focus.

Comment 9

[Alex Limi (:limi) — Firefox UX Team]

Mac OS X 10.7 doesn't let Ctrl-left/right move to start/end of line anywhere, as far as I can tell. Nowhere in Safari does it do this, and bug 289384 is still an issue, but is about Cmd, not Ctrl.