564798 - Keyboard Shortcut Review Request

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Keyboard Navigation, defect)

Description

[Paul [pwd]]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.3a5pre) Gecko/20100508 Minefield/3.7a5pre
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.3a5pre) Gecko/20100508 Minefield/3.7a5pre

I believe that the current keyboard shortcut system is broken. It’s simply not intuitive and this greatly hinders usability.

I’d like to propose that we break the current shortcut system in Firefox in order to introduce a whole new intuitive shortcut system along with the Firefox button that’s proposed for Firefox.next.

Under my proposal, we’d break long standing functionality in favour of a system that, to borrow a term from Steve Jobs, “just works”.

I propose that we respect ‘global shortcuts’ these are shortcuts that are common to the operating system and are found in actions such as Save, Copy, Cut, Paste, etc.

I would then live to have some consistency in regards to Traditional Menu Drop Down’s. This covers File, Edit, View, History, etc.

Lastly, I’d like to have some sort of consistency in regards to action and panels, such as the Add-On’s Manager, Downloads Manager, Error Console.

Due to the level of change I’m proposing, I’d like to make sure that the ability is added in order for a user to run an Add-On to revert controls to the current standard (as seen in 3.6.x).

As stated, I believe it’s important to set consistent ideas and initially that brings us to the control button. As current, there is a mixture of behaviour when you click control and an action. The error console comes up with Ctrl+J for example.

The changes I’d like to propose in regards to the Ctrl+[letter] shortcuts:

	Ctrl+S = Bookmark – Users seldom save webpages and in fact the equivalent behaviour to native desktop applications (which save documents, etc) would be bookmark. This should be respected in Firefox. Saving a page should be left without a keyboard shortcut.

	Ctrl+J = [Blank] – This should be removed completely.

The control command should host all instantaneous actions, so cut, copy, paste, save, open all adhere to this naturally.


The changes I’d like to propose in regards to the Alt+[letter] shortcuts:

	Alt+N = Navigation Menu – This is currently the History menu which is stored under Alt+S. S is far from intuitive, however renaming the menu to navigation make the actions held under this menu more intuitive, as it currently contains navigation controls (back, forward). And of course history is a part of navigation.

Alt+[letter] is reserved for top level menu’s. Or initial menu’s under the Firefox button. Every menu is available intuitively as Alt+[First Letter of Menu]. This is open to being too limited a scope in the future, but for now it’s perfect. I’m not sure how many additional menu’s a browser will ever need to add.


The changes I’d like to propose for Ctrl+Shift+[letter]:

	Ctrl+Shift+D = Downloads – This is intuitive and solves the long standing problem I’ve had with Firefox’s downloads panel, in that I’ve never been able to remember it as Ctrl+Shift+J as it just doesn’t make sense.

	Ctrl+Shift+E = Error Console – I understand that a lot of people are accustomed to it being J as it derived from the Javascript Panel, but it does more than that now and should have a shortcut indicative of its greater user.

	Ctrl+Shift+A = Add-On Manager – It’s simply intuitive.

	Ctrl+Shift+B = Organise Bookmarks

	Ctrl+Shift+H = Show All History

As you can see, Ctrl+Shift+[letter] is all about panels, as such, I’d like to put Save All Bookmarks under this convention as Ctrl+Shift+S (Save As) as I feel it opens enough user interaction to mean it’s action here fits the feel of this scheme. It’s also native to the OS.

Based on this proposal, all aspects of the keyboard items are extendible and identifiable. This means greater ease of use for the user and also means that Add-On Developers will be able to stick to the convention and maintain usability greatly increasing the feel of integration.

I apologise for not listing every shortcut in this proposal.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[[not reading bugmail]]

If changes occur it would/should be updated here: http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Keyboard+shortcuts?s=shortcuts&as=s

Comment 2

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

The bug mentions Windows 7, and your examples exemplify the use of Ctrl - have you taken Mac OSX into consideration?

Comment 3

[Paul [pwd]]

(In reply to comment #2)
> The bug mentions Windows 7, and your examples exemplify the use of Ctrl - have
> you taken Mac OSX into consideration?

Yup, Cmd would be used for OSX. Hopefully there are no conflicts but I'm yet to confirm it.

Comment 4

[ithinc]

Ctrl+S and Ctrl+P should be retired from Save Page and Print Page. Seldom used. Mis-pressed annoying.

Comment 5

[ithinc]

Some shortcuts worth considering:
Ctrl+Shift+C: Copy Page Location
Ctrl+Shift+V: Paste and Go
Ctrl+Shift+S: Paste and Search
Ctrl+Shift+Z: Undo Close Tab

Comment 6

[Paul [pwd]]

Limi, can we wontfix this?