579562 - Alt+T, O should open the Preferences dialog even on Linux, and Alt+E, N should open the Options dialog even on Windows

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 51125

(Firefox :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Jason Spiro]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.7) Gecko/2009032803 Iceweasel/3.0.6 (Debian-3.0.6-1)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.7) Gecko/2009032803 Iceweasel/3.0.6 (Debian-3.0.6-1)

On Linux, Alt+T opens the Tools menu, and O (for Options) does nothing.  It would be better if this would open the Preferences dialog.

On Windows, Alt+E opens the Edit menu, and N (for prefereNces) does nothing.  It would be better if this would open the Options dialog.

All this would be nice for people who switch platforms often.  Note that you don't have to actually create menu items: just make the keyboard shortcuts work.

Another RFE that would help multi-platform users is bug 51125:  "Accel-Comma should open Preferences (cmd-, on macos, ctrl-, on win32/linux)".

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Jo Hermans]

Alt-e-n and alt-t-o are not regular shortcuts, but accelerators : they point to a menu (alt-e or alt-t), in which the item must be found (and visible). Since Preferences/Options are in different locations due to platform guidelines (and different names too), they cannot be found with the same accelerator. So bug 51125 is the only option.

Comment 2

[Andy Lyttle]

It might seem like a good idea, since these key combinations aren't currently used for anything else.  However, by reserving shortcuts for invisible options, it means if we add different options later, we've got a problem (and it would be a different problem for each platform, which would be confusing).  Also, for a user who accidentally presses the wrong key, it would be a mystery why Preferences opened unexpectedly.

Finally, I'm not sure how Firefox implements menus, but if they're platform-native, it may not be possible to add hotkeys to menu items that don't really exist.  I don't think this is the case on Windows or Linux, but it would definitely be non-standard behavior.

Comment 3

[Jo Hermans]

If you pres alt-t, then the tools menu will open. The o will select the item with the o underlined. Under Linux, this is totally wrong, since there's no Options under tools (it's called Preferences, and it's under the Edit menu). That is the accelerator "o" doesn't work at all.

alt-t-0 isn't a shortcut, it's an ACCELERATOR for the tools menu, followed by an accelerator for an item underlined with o. SHORTCUTS are different and are on the right hand side of the menu. They are NOT the same (note that most items have both assigned). And you can't ranodm assign an accelerator to an item (alt-t select the Tools menu, and will not look inside the edit menu !)

Either we leave it like it is know (platform specific), or we need a single shortcut for the Preferences/Options, or we can break platform guidelines by moving Preferences to the Tools menu and renaming it (or the reverse). That last one is unacceptable.

Comment 4

[Andy Lyttle]

Sorry if I wasn't clear with my terminology.  :-)