599872 - Show Panorama view on holding ctrl+tab

Status: VERIFIED WONTFIX

(Firefox Graveyard :: Panorama, enhancement, P4)

Description

[Dave Garrett]

The Tab Candy / Panorama hotkey is being set to ctrl+E in bug 592183.

Suggestion for (an additional) more natural shortcut:

HOLD ctrl+tab

(shift+)ctrl+tab cycles through tabs. Pressing it a bunch of times jumps through a bunch of tabs. Holding it for auto-repeat just runs through a bunch without much control. Instead, we could intercept the attempt to auto-repeat and use that as a shortcut to open Panorama. It would actually make sense as an extension of the existing shortcuts.

Comment 1

[(account disabled for personal attacks)]

Not additional, it should be the only shortcut. Seems no one in the previous bug was bothered by the fact that Ctrl+E was already taken (opens the Firefox start/search page). It's pretty annoying to loose that functionality.

Comment 2

[Dave Garrett]

Ctrl+E does nothing for me. It looks like that key was a Windows specific IE transition compatibility shortcut, which is really not needed anymore. Ctrl+K looks like it's set to do the same thing on all platforms. That being said, I don't really care if there's a regular ctrl+E shortcut also or not. You can argue over whether to revert bug 592183 in a new bug if this one goes through, but this one is just for the new idea, at least for now.

Comment 3

[alex_mayorga]

(In reply to comment #0)

Better yet, let ctrl+tab still cycle through tabs for 1 or 2 spins (use this to quickly switch tabs) then introduce Panorama.

Comment 4

[Ian Gilman [:iangilman]]

This might be an amusing bonus feature, but it wouldn't work for primary use; the required delay is an issue, as is its lack of discoverability.

Comment 5

[Aza Raskin [:aza]]

Agreed, this is something totally worth exploring (and I think better than our current ctrl+tab implementation) but won't make it for Firefox 4. Bumping it to Future and whiteboarding with need for design.

Comment 6

[Dave Garrett]

(In reply to comment #4)
> its lack of discoverability

This is very discoverable to those already using ctrl+tab. The second someone who normally ctrl+tabs through tabs holds the button, it'll give them a full view instead of a too-quick skim. Seeing as alt+tab for windows and ctrl+tab for children of windows (with shift for reverse) is extremely standard, anyone who learned any keyboard shortcuts for any OS in the past decade would find this feature incidentally rather quickly.

Comment 7

[ithinc]

I have noticed several extensions are using Ctrl twice as a shortcut. It seems that is more useful.

Comment 8

[Tim Taubert [:ttaubert] (inactive)]

I think this would be very confusing for users accidentally hitting it. Let's not do this.

Comment 9

[Dave Garrett]

Yeah, with Panorama very de-emphasized now it would not be helpful anymore. It only made sense as a shortcut if Panorama was to be kept front and center.