601322 - Add Safari-style keyboard shortcuts for changing tabs

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 349691

(Camino Graveyard :: Tabbed Browsing, enhancement)

Description

[S Woodside]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en; rv:1.9.2.12pre) Gecko/20101001 Camino/2.1a1pre (like Firefox/3.6.12pre)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en; rv:1.9.2.12pre) Gecko/20101001 Camino/2.1a1pre (like Firefox/3.6.12pre)

Currently Camino offers option-command-arrow to switch tabs. However sometimes I get confused if I'm switching between browsers and it would be convenient if Camino would also support the Safari keyboard shortcuts as well. As far as I can tell they are available in Camino.

It offers duplicate commands:
Next tab: control-tabkey or shift-option-command-rightarrow
Previous tab: control-shift-tab or shift-option-command-leftarrow



Reproducible: Always

Comment 2

[S Woodside]

bug 349691 deals with old style safari shortcuts using {} and rejects them on the basis that they are not good on certain keyboards. Safari has now changed their shortcuts and thus this issue can be revisited.

Comment 3

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

Yes, and if you'll read the other bugs calling for p-safari, you'll see why those were rejected as well. This is still a dupe: it's calling for Safari parity, and we have no intention of slavishly following the arbitrary changes Safari keeps making every other version or so. (Since that bug was filed, Safari has changed its "primary" keyboard shortcuts for this TWICE, at least once in a way that totally breaks standard Mac OS X text-editing behaviour.)

Do not re-open this bug.

Comment 4

[S Woodside]

I've just reviewed the various bugs, one of the key ones being Bug 162107 in which I actually filed a patch back in 2004. And I've filed a few more since them. I don't actually remember doing it, but obviously it's something that keeps coming back to me.

In Bug 162107 and Bug 349691, the following reasons are provided for not adopting the Safari-style tab switching shortcuts:

(a) It was command-shift-{ and }, which are not friends on QWERTY and foreign language keyboards.

(b) Those shortcuts can't be done with one hand (see Bug 308115)

Now Apple has changed to using control-tabkey which does not suffer from either of those complaints. Therefore dismissing the suggestion out of hand is short-sighted and I'm going to persevere.

The new Safari shortcut also solves an old problem with the default Camino shortcut, which is that it can't easily be done with one hand. Therefore, adding control-tabkey offers the following benefits:

1. Allows users to change tabs with one hand
2. Makes it easier to switch from Safari to Camino.

And there are no actual drawbacks.

I'll set this to UNCONFIRMED instead of REOPENED in the hopes that it will annoy you less... Please don't close it again. I'd like a second opinion if you will. If someone else finds my logic is incorrect, I can accept that.

Comment 5

[Stuart Morgan]

I don't understanding what the argument is for adding this but not adding all the other shortcuts for tab switching that Firefox uses, Safari uses (including the legacy ones they still support), Terminal uses, etc., and supporting umpteen shortcuts is really not something that interests me.

Why should the solution for this be for us to add every shortcut that anyone wants rather than for the small number of people who want some specific other shortcut to use System Preferences to change the shortcut for themselves?

Comment 6

[Smokey Ardisson (offline for a while; not following bugs - do not email)]

Are we supposed to keep adding (and then removing) these shortcuts when Safari adds and removes its shortcut-du-jour?  Safari has a horrible history for shortcut consistency and longevity, and it's a fool's errand to try to keep up with them.  Given that, and that it's easy enough for anyone who switches back and forth to use System Preferences to change one app or another, this is either a dupe of bug 349691 or WONTFIX, take your pick.

Comment 8

[agb]

For what it's worth, I completely stopped using Camino because of the keyboard shortcut issue.  Now that I know about the System Preferences workaround, I'll revisit, but I'm sure others have left as well for the same reason.

It's a novice-user thing to expect standard keyboard shortcuts to work.  It's an expert-user thing to change those in System Prefs.

Camino should follow the standard OS keyboard shortcuts as much as possible, and if they change, then Camino should change again.  If you like your proprietary non-standard shortcuts, why don't you put those in System Preferences and stop making everyone else suffer?

Comment 9

[Chris Lawson (gone)]

(In reply to comment #8)

> It's a novice-user thing to expect standard keyboard shortcuts to work.  It's
> an expert-user thing to change those in System Prefs.

Define "standard". Control as a primary shortcut key? What is this, Windows?

Why are you even commenting here?

Comment 10

[Stuart Morgan]

> Camino should follow the standard OS keyboard shortcuts as much as possible

There *is* no OS-standard shortcut for tab switching. Safari doesn't set OS standards all by itself, it's just one app. And given that it changes its shortcut pretty much every release, it's hardly a poster-child for standards here. Terminal also uses tabs now, and it does *not* use the same shortcut--instead, it uses the nasty locale-unfriendly {/} shortcut which Safari abandoned. When Apple ships two apps with tabs and they don't agree, that's not a standard.

If and when Apple creates a real standard for tab switching, there is a very good chance we will adopt it (see for example "Find", which we changed, despite the short term pain, to match the standard once there *was* a clear standard). Feel free to file a bug once there actually is a clear, established standard, and we will seriously consider it.

Comment 11

[S Woodside]

Let me ask this: what's the harm in adding the keyboard shortcuts used by Safari actually? What's the drawback?