405346 - When viewing a web page, the HOME and END keys should behave as they do in editing apps

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Keyboard Navigation, enhancement)

Description

[John David Galt]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025 Firefox/2.0.0.9
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025 Firefox/2.0.0.9

The changes shown below would make the behavior of the HOME and END keys on a read-only web page consistent with their behavior in input fields, and in all standard editing programs (Notepad, Word, etc.)

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. View any web page which is larger than your screen both horizontally and vertically, and does not contain any input fields.
2. Press the keys and see what they do.
Actual Results:  
HOME goes to beginning of entire document.
END goes to end of entire document.
CTRL-HOME is ignored.
CTRL-END is ignored.

Expected Results:  
HOME should go to beginning of current line
END should go to end of current line
CTRL-HOME should go to beginning of entire document
CTRL-END should go to end of entire document

I could accept making this change a Preferences option if it turns out that some users expect the old behavior.

Comment 1

[Jim Jeffery not reading bug-mail 1/2/11]

Caret browsing does, Press F7 to toggle on/off.

Comment 2

[Jo Hermans]

They do if you select caret browsing (press F7 and click on 'Yes'). The behavior you want is linked to a caret (=cursor), which a regular browser page doesn't have.

Comment 3

[John David Galt]

I tried that, it fixes HOME but causes END to do nothing.

Comment 4

[Jeremy Baron]

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071025 Firefox/2.0.0.9
WFM on mac except I had to use the platform specific convention of home/end for whole page and cmd-left/right for individual line.  Also this is a laptop so it was fn-f7.

Comment 5

[John David Galt]

Here's a page which illustrates the problems I'm having with it.
   http://www.18xx.net/tiles/list.htm

END doesn't work because the cursor "lives" in the left column of the table.
Similarly, PageUp/PageDown cause an unwanted jump into the left column.
And finally, if I scroll using the scroll bars, the cursor doesn't move, resulting in an unwanted jump next time I attempt to scroll using the arrow keys.

All of these are problems that need to be fixed.
Therefore, "caret browsing" is simply not an adequate solution.

Comment 6

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

Are you really particular about these keys being the solution, or do you really just want some keyboard way to scroll far left and far right?

Comment 7

[John David Galt]

I'd really prefer at least the option to use those, but any keys that would serve the same purpose would be an improvement.  I'm well aware that the Mac and Unix have their own conventional editing keys and could live with either of those arrangements.

Comment 8

[Simon Bünzli]

Since most web pages don't need to be horizontally scrolled at reasonable window sizes, this would mean that Home and End do nothing most of the time. This bug should thus be either WONTFIX or changed into an enhancement request for actually adding separate shortcuts for horizontally scrolling to the left/right edge of the page.

Comment 9

[chAlx]

<Crtl>-<Home> and <Ctrl>-<End> should scroll to the top and bottom of the page, if no higher-level binding is used at the moment (such as textarea scrolling).

May be <Home> and <End> themselves should too.

Comment 10

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (relman/hg->git project)]

Home and End on a Mac (fn-left and fn-right arrows) go to the top and bottom of a page, but End does not go to the end of the last line of the bottom of the page.

John David, are you looking for something that will let you mark the point after the last element of a web page? 

I wonder if this is a good candidate for an extension.

Comment 11

[John David Galt]

What I had in mind was this behavior, which works in Windows and in common Windows apps including Microsoft Office:

HOME - scrolls to the left end of current line; does not move vertically.
END - scrolls to the right end of current line; does not move vertically.
CTRL/HOME - scrolls to the beginning of entire document (as HOME does now in FF).
CTRL/END - scrolls to the end of entire document (as END does now in FF).

Comment 12

[chAlx]

(In reply to John David Galt from comment #11)
Why would web page VIEWER behave like an EDITOR? Viewers tends to avoid horizontal scrolling at all and most of them (?) bind <Home>/<End> to top/bottom scrolling.

Additional shortcuts for horizontal column/page/full scrolling is a good idea. But we already have a caret browsing feature (F7) switching viewer keys to editor mode.

Comment 13

[Liz Henry (:lizzard) (relman/hg->git project)]

John, thanks, I understand. If it gets a wontfix, then it still seems like something that could be handled with an addon.