394668 - No obvious key sequence to quit a help browser

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(SeaMonkey :: Help Viewer, defect)

Description

[Jack Lloyd]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686 (x86_64); en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686 (x86_64); en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6

It seems incredibly inconsistent to me that it is so easy to accidentally (or intentionally) open a help window using a key command (eg F1 in Firefox 2.0.0.6), but there is no apparent way of quitting using the same method. This is particularly a problem for users who do not or can not use a mouse.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Hit F1
2. Try to exit the help browser without using a mouse

Actual Results:  
You give up, and hope that in addition to having a working mouse that you are physically capable of using one

Expected Results:  
One should be able to easily quit the help browser using a key sequence that is obvious (such as C-Q, M-Q, or ESC). Lacking that, upon searching for "Quit" the documentation should tell you how to quit the help browser for users who are lacking a mouse (however I am aware that such a bug would have to be filed for a different component).

Comment 1

[Steffen Wilberg]

Ctrl+W and Alt+F4 should work, at least they do on Windows.
Maybe we should make Ctrl+Shift+W work as well, because this is the Close Window shortcut in Firefox when the tabbar is present, and which is listed in the Keyboard Shortcuts document.
ESC doesn't because this is not a dialog. Esc currently switches back from the Search sidebar to the Contents sidebar.

Comment 2

[Jack Lloyd]

On reading your comment I did find that using my window manager's (sawfish) window close command (bound to Ctrl+W) does work. Relying on the desktop system to handle the close does mean things will be inconsistent between Windows, OS X, and X11 which seems unfortunate, especially because it make it difficult to document correctly for all users. Using the same key sequence as an similar operation that already exists in FF seems like a good solution to me.

Comment 3

[Stefan [:stefanh]]

Resolving as WFM since (per comment #2), Ctrl+W closes the window (on Mac Cmd+W does close the window).