597308 - Add a keyboard shortcut for All Tabs

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1576130

(Firefox :: Keyboard Navigation, defect)

Description

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

Follow up bug from bug 592887, we need a keybaord shortcut for List All Tabs, since this is the only way to get to tabs from other computers.  perhaps control-alt-tab

Comment 1

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

The UX team is very eager to get this bug landed over the next few days in order to make Beta 11.  If anyone can get a patch for this bug posted soon, we will push hard for reviews and approval (even though this isn't blocking).

You can view all of the related bugs to clean up the traditional menu bar here: http://areweprettyyet.com/4/traditionalMenu/

Comment 2

[Steffen Wilberg]

Ctrl+Alt+Tab doesn't work, it triggers the OS app switcher (tested on Ubuntu).

Ctrl+Shift+Tab is taken, it switches to the previous tab. Unless you set browser.allTabs.previews and browser.ctrlTab.previews to true, then it opens the all tabs preview. I don't think we can steal that shortcut if the preview is disabled though.

Ctrl+Alt+t opens the terminal (Ubuntu).
Ctrl+Shift+T is taken (undo close tab).

The all tabs menu is similar to the menus on the menu bar. Those are accessed with the Alt key plus some accesskey, like Alt+t for the Tools menu.
So how about Alt+l for "List all Tabs" (like the tooltip says)?

Comment 3

[Steffen Wilberg]

Attachment: proof of concept

Tested on Linux.
Tried to set the accesskey attribute of the toolbarbutton, but that didn't work.

Comment 4

[Steffen Wilberg]

Dao, could you have a look, please?

Comment 5

[Steffen Wilberg]

Attachment: patch

Comment 6

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

Comment on attachment 533468 [details] [diff] [review]
patch

Alt is reserved for access keys and OS-level commands on Windows, afaik.

If we enabled browser.ctrlTab.previews, we could let Shift+Ctrl+Tab open the menu.

Comment 7

[Steffen Wilberg]

(In reply to comment #6)
> Alt is reserved for access keys and OS-level commands on Windows, afaik.

Right, Alt+f opens the File menu, Alt+b the bookmarks menu, and alt+l should open the List all Tabs menu.

The patch is a hack for adding an accesskey to the toolbarbutton, which doesn't work.

Comment 8

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to comment #7)
> (In reply to comment #6)
> > Alt is reserved for access keys and OS-level commands on Windows, afaik.
> 
> Right, Alt+f opens the File menu, Alt+b the bookmarks menu, and alt+l should
> open the List all Tabs menu.

F and B are access keys. They're underlined, so the users knows they exist.

> The patch is a hack for adding an accesskey to the toolbarbutton, which
> doesn't work.

Toolbar buttons aren't supposed to have access keys.

Comment 9

[Steffen Wilberg]

> > Right, Alt+f opens the File menu, Alt+b the bookmarks menu, and alt+l should
> > open the List all Tabs menu.
> 
> F and B are access keys. They're underlined, so the users knows they exist.
Yeah, the key is not displayed. But that's a problem a commandkey would have as well.

> > The patch is a hack for adding an accesskey to the toolbarbutton, which
> > doesn't work.
> Toolbar buttons aren't supposed to have access keys.
Even a type="menu" button?
Actually, setting an accesskey on a toolbarbutton should work:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/XUL/toolbarbutton
I'll check why this doesn't work for me here, but that's moot if you're opposed to alt+l. Finding another key is difficult though, see comment 2.

Comment 10

[ithinc]

Alt+L could indeed trigger a command event, but it seems the popup can't be opened if Alt is hold.

Comment 11

[Alex Faaborg [:faaborg] (Firefox UX)]

Dao's right that an alt-* command for a menu button is unconventional.  The general idea is that if the user hits alt they should visually be able to see all of the thing that they can interact with using the keyboard (using underlines, which we couldn't do with the down arrow for the list all tabs button).  For keyboard based users, it's important that they can sit down at a new application and discover how to interact with it without having to access external information.

Kind of a random idea, but what if we introduced a top level menu called Tabs when the user hit alt.  For instance, other controls like back/forward/location bar only show up in the main menu when the user is an accessibility mode, so it seems like having access to tabs in the main menu would just complete the list of things that they can interact with.  It would be visually discoverable once they entered the mode, and consistent with the rest of their keyboard-based menu interactions.

The downside is that it would be a bit jarring to see a new main menu command appear out of nowhere (less so when the Firefox button is displayed, and the entire main menu appears out of nowhere).

We would probably want to put the menu early in the order, perhaps after tabs.

Another alternative would be to just build out the File menu to contain everything in the list all tabs menu when invoked with alt.  But that is kind of messy, and might not even literally fit on screen.

Comment 15

[alxobr]

How about adding an entry "List all tabs Ctrl+F11" in the View menu after "Full Screen F11" ?