390989 - Make modifiers for content accesskeys configurable through UI

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Settings UI, enhancement)

Description

[Armin Fuerst]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6

Based on Bug 349716, Comment #11: The configuration of 
"ui.key.generalAccessKey" should be easily available through the preferences.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Armin Fuerst]

There is only one additional issue with the modifiers: If numeric accesskeys are defined and the modifier contains "shift", it should work since normally users don't have a chance of changing the accesskeys of a webpage.

Comment 2

[Simon Bünzli]

Note that ui.key.generalAccessKey is deprecated in favor of ui.key.contentAccess and ui.key.chromeAccess (i.e. ui.key.generalAccessKey is for backwards-compatibility only).

(In reply to comment #1)
Numeric accesskeys should always work (bug 357101). If they don't, please file a new bug (mixing issues inside a single bug only leads to them being forgotten).

Comment 3

[Mike]

I agree that there needs to be an interface for this so you don't have to force users into about:config to change this. A simple "Menu shortcuts have precedence over website shortcuts" checkbox should be sufficient.

It's hard to encourage users to switch to Firefox from IE or another browser if they have to edit the browser configuration to get the same functionality that they're used to.

Comment 4

[Armin Fuerst]

(In reply to comment #3)
> I agree that there needs to be an interface for this so you don't have to force
> users into about:config to change this. A simple "Menu shortcuts have
> precedence over website shortcuts" checkbox should be sufficient.

When I reported the bug, I was thinking more about an interface providing all possible modifier keys with a checkbox to define the combination for content accesskeys. I think one checkbox is not sufficient because it is still impossible to change the content accesskeys to a customized value.

Comment 5

[Mike]

Any updates on this situation? I would really like to see this addressed by the time FF3 goes final next year - especially because of the new warning that greets users when they go to about:config. At the very least, a simple setting to determine whether browser accesskeys should have precedence over content accesskeys is needed. I still prefer the common functionality offered by many other programs - you have to press and release alt to highlight the menus, then press the appropriate key to access whatever menu you want.

Comment 6

[Mike]

Bumping this again...

Comment 7

[Simon Bünzli]

Well, both Alt+Shift+... and Alt+... shortcuts have their drawbacks. However Alt+Shift+... is the more reasonable default (otherwise we wouldn't have changed it) and users are encouraged to adapt as far as possible. Where that isn't possible, I'd much rather recommend to use an extension which improves accesskeys to at least Opera's level.

So: Bug 303192 should have a reasonable chance of getting fixed in one of the next releases. This bug doesn't.

Comment 8

[Armin Fuerst]

(In reply to comment #7)
> Well, both Alt+Shift+... and Alt+... shortcuts have their drawbacks. However
> Alt+Shift+... is the more reasonable default (otherwise we wouldn't have
> changed it) and users are encouraged to adapt as far as possible. Where that
> isn't possible, I'd much rather recommend to use an extension which improves
> accesskeys to at least Opera's level.
> 
> So: Bug 303192 should have a reasonable chance of getting fixed in one of the
> next releases. This bug doesn't.

If every combination has a disadvantage, why don't you let the user decide and
make it easily configurable? I can't believe it is too difficult.

Comment 9

[Aaron Digulla]

Use case: I have to switch between IE and FF all the time. So I'm always hitting the wrong keys and then get irritated that the stupid software is broken again, network is down or my computer hangs until I realize that my trained reflexes got it wrong again.

This is one reason why my company won't support FF: It's incompatible to IE in important areas (i.e. the UI). We would love the security features of FF but we can't handle the huge amount of support calls when users can't get FF to do the things they do every day with IE.

Bad fox. Down! :)