474070 - Pressing ESC should leave Full Screen mode (Escape)

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Keyboard Navigation, enhancement)

Description

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2a1pre) Gecko/20090116 Minefield/3.2a1pre
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2a1pre) Gecko/20090116 Minefield/3.2a1pre

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go into FF Fullscreen Mode: F11 *or* View > Fullscreen *or* Appmenu > [↙↗] 
2. Press ESC, hoping to get out of Fullscreen mode (which works virtually everywhere else, both inside and outside Firefox)

Actual Results:  
* Nothing

Expected Results:  
* ESC should exit browser Fullscreen mode (**at least** after any other uses of ESC event have been consumed)
* ux-consistency with existing use of ESC to exit all other flavors of fullscreen in FF and many other apps

I can't see any substantial reasons against having ESC as a shortcut for exiting Fullscreen Mode. Even in bug 997528 where online games are asking to be notified of ESC event so as to optionally prevent ESC from exiting full screen mode (as it currently does), ESC has been confirmed as the swiss-knife, one-for-all, de facto standard 'exit full screen' API. It's even explicitly supported as an easy and reliable way of "getting out of abusive sites".

This bug/RFE has been approved by Alex Limi (:limi) from Firefox UX in comment 8.
11 years after this has been reported (and counting), it would be great if Firefox could finally fix this anomaly of ESC *not* exiting Full screen mode...

Comment 1

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

Esc can be and is used for a bunch of other things by in-page content, the findbar, etc.  Just hit F11 to return to normal mode.

Comment 2

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Esc can be and is used for a bunch of other things by in-page content, the
> findbar, etc.
True, but I don't understand why/how that should hinder the implementation of ESC as an alternative key to exit full screen? If ESC event is consumed by "other things" on the page, fine - let it be consumed. But if the browser gets it, unconsumed, why not exit Fullscreen? Using your example, obviously pressing ESC while focus is in findbar will first close the findbar, but the next ESC could very well close Fullscreen. Am I missing sth.?

> Just hit F11 to return to normal mode.
The point I was trying to make is that for many average users, pressing F11 will never come to their mind and memories, but ESC would.

In addition, the problem remains that there is no straightforward way to exit Fullscreen using mouse interaction: no button, no menu. You are right indeed: it's JUST F11. Shame.

Comment 3

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

No, the mouse method is to click the button between minimize and close, don't remember what it's correctly called.

Comment 4

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to comment #3)
> No, the mouse method is to click the button between minimize and close, don't
> remember what it's correctly called.
Thanks for pointing out "Restore" button. I just realized that it has a different function than the usual Restore button with the same icon in FF's non-fullscreen modes: In fullscreen mode, clicking Restore button will restore whatever window size was active before (maximized OR window size), whereas normally it is used for restoring window size only.

I'd appreciate if you could answer my first question of comment #2, too.

Comment 6

[[e-mail]]

As the author of the duplicate bug above, I'll comment that I think a decision should be made about whether escape should stop the loading of the page, or whether it should escape full screen mode.

This seems like a good time for a little usability testing. For now though, WONTFIX seems like a reasonable solution...

Comment 8

[Alex Limi (:limi) — Firefox UX Team]

(In reply to comment #2)
> If ESC event is consumed
> by "other things" on the page, fine - let it be consumed. But if the browser
> gets it, unconsumed, why not exit Fullscreen? Using your example, obviously
> pressing ESC while focus is in findbar will first close the findbar, but the
> next ESC could very well close Fullscreen.

That's exactly how it should work. If page is loading, Esc should stop the page load, and the next press of Esc should exit full-screen mode.

Reopening — let me know if it's better to have a new bug for this.

Comment 10

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

4 years after reporting, this bug still sucks every time, because of strong "ESC exits fullscreen" habit formation from virtually every other application out there including most other fullscreens seen in Firefox itself.

More precisely, this bug violates ux-consistency with the following:
- FF inbuilt PDF reader: ESC exits fullscreen
- FF inbuilt support for HTML5 video/ogg etc.: ESC exits fullscreen
- FF Flash plugin and other FF video plugins: ESC exits fullscreen
- Microsoft Word: ESC exits fullscreen and page preview
- IrfanView: ESC exits fullscreen
- etc.
So FF fullscreen mode is really the *only* place where ESC doesn't do the trick.
-> ux-consistency

F11 to exit fullscreen is also very undiscoverable when you're there
-> ux-discovery

Comment 11

[support]

Please, I'm begging you. Don't do this, at lease don't do this if the Esc key was handled by the web page.

In current version: 19.0.2, when the web page entered full screen mode (using mozRequestFullScreen), there is even no way to catch the Esc key event.

Using Esc key to escape the full screen mode is like using "," as a separator. I suggest to try the Chrome way.

Comment 12

[u474331]

I think the esc key should exit from fullscreen mode too. I always tray to exit with that key to discover that I have to use f11 instead, because in all the other programs I use "esc" for this (video player, pdf reader, libreoffice, ...). So difficult would it be to add a shortcut for esc togheter with f11? This bug is from 2009....

Making Firefox to behave like other programs would make it easier to use and more useful, instead of going on his own way.

Comment 14

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to support from comment #11)

Please, I'm begging you. Don't do this, at lease don't do this if the Esc
key was handled by the web page.

In current version: 19.0.2, when the web page entered full screen mode
(using mozRequestFullScreen), there is even no way to catch the Esc key
event.

That's bug 997528, not this bug. This bug is about the inconsistency of having different types of full screen mode whereby the Firefox browser Full screen mode (View > Fullscreen or F11) is the only odd one out which does not allow users to exit fullscreen with ESC, at all. So if this bug affects your scenario at all, it would still depend on implementation. So far, my proposal, as confirmed by Alex Limi (:limi) from Firefox UX in comment 8, is to allow web pages to consume Escape event before the browser gets it, so in that case, you'd still be good. But again, I think that's a discussion for bug 997528, not here.

Using Esc key to escape the full screen mode is like using "," as a
separator. I suggest to try the Chrome way.

Could you summarize "the Chrome way"?