686436 - ctrl+tab, ctrl+shift+tab for switching tabs missing from TB keyboard shortcuts documentation

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Help Documentation, defect)

Comment 1

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Documentation is missing for ctrl+[shift]+tab on TB's list of keyboard shortcuts (http://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/Keyboard-shortcuts)

Suppose we should have:

Switch to next tab [ctrl]+[tab]
Switch to previous tab [ctrl]+[shift]+[tab]

Comment 2

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Jen, can you verify the behaviour for MAC and Unix, and comment on the wording? (see questions below)

Looking at the Firefox keyboard shortcuts documentation, windows & tabs section (1), I found some more shortcuts which work on TB for Windows:

For Windows:

Next Tab: Ctrl+Tab or Ctrl+Page Down
Previous Tab: Ctrl+Shift+Tab or Ctrl+Page Up

We need to verify the behaviour for MAC and Unix.
For MAC, *Firefox* shows:

Next Tab: control + tab OR control + page down OR command + option + →
Previous Tab: control + shift + tab OR control + page up OR command + option + ←

Jen,
- on MAC OS, do we have all of these (3 each), with exactly these keys (control vs. command!), for Thunderbird, too?
- does TB for Unix have the same keyboard shortcuts for this as on Windows (2 each)?

With regards to the caption, I chose "Switch to" because it seems to be slightly different from "Go to" (view another msg within the current layout) and "Move to" (move focus around). However, if compared with the verb-less captions in FF documentation, I wonder if we are actually adding much value or perhaps just adding confusion (about the subtle differences of non-technical terms) and distraction from the actual function: As a user, I may not care much if it's "go to", "move to", or "switch to", I just want the "Next Tab" - where not adding a verb allows the user to imagine whichever verb he likes best. So perhaps we could just have:

Proposed wording:

Next Tab: ...
Previous Tab: ...

Jen, thoughts/preferences?

(1) http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/Keyboard%20shortcuts#w_windows-tabs

Comment 3

[sreepriya1111]

These are the missing commands. I found them working for Linux too. But I don't know about Mac. I would like to get it verified.
|-
|Next Tab
|{for win,linux}{key Ctrl+Tab}<br>{key Ctrl+Page Down}{/for}
|-
|Previous Tab
|{for win,linux}{key Ctrl+Shift+Tab}<br>{key Ctrl+Page Up}{/for}
|-

Comment 4

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to sreepriya1111 from comment #3)
> These are the missing commands. I found them working for Linux too. But I
> don't know about Mac. I would like to get it verified.

Yes, we need to wait for Jen's answer to my comment 2.

> |-
> |Next Tab
> |{for win,linux}{key Ctrl+Tab}<br>{key Ctrl+Page Down}{/for}
> |-
> |Previous Tab
> |{for win,linux}{key Ctrl+Shift+Tab}<br>{key Ctrl+Page Up}{/for}
> |-

sreepriya1111, thank you, that looks very correct!

In fact, you have used the logically correct markup ({key x+y}), whereas the rest of the document is using a logically wrong and much more clumsy markup ({button x} + {button y}). So you've just uncovered a major problem in the underlying source code, which I have filed as bug 718962. Thank you!

However, due to bug 718962, the changes of your revision (1) now stand out from the rest of the document because you are using the correct markup and it is displayed with a different font type. I think we need the document to have a uniform formatting, so imo our options are:
1) Fix bug 718962, so that we use the correct markup for the whole document: {key}
2) Adapt your revision to use the majority markup, albeit it's wrong: use {button} instead of {key}

Furthermore (nitfixes of your revision, (1)):
a) you accidentally left a '''bold''' test markup somewhere which needs to be removed
b) your capitalization of MAC OS keys differs from the rest of the document:
you have: control, command
our doc has: Control, Command
Again, we need to be uniform. I suppose capital initials are ok (FF documentation is inconsistent).
So you should also capitalize the following:
Shift, Tab, Page Down, Page Up (and Control, Command)
c) I think we should use &rarr; and &larr; for the cursor right/left arrows instead of their unicode numbers to make the code more readable (and, while we are here, replace the existing "right arrow" and "left arrow" button captions for expand/collapse Thread with &rarr; and &larr;, too).

Next steps:
sreepriya1111, would you be willing to either
A) adapt your revision, i. e. 2) above + nitfixes OR
B) fix 718962 + nitfixes?

Comment 5

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Thomas D. from comment #4)
> However, due to bug 718962, the changes of your revision (1) now stand out

(1) https://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/keyboard-shortcuts/revision/5540

Comment 6

[sreepriya1111]

Ok.. I will take up both.

Comment 7

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to sreepriya1111 from comment #6)
> Ok.. I will take up both.

I assume when you say "both", you mean B) from comment 4:
> B) fix 718962 + nitfixes

That's great. So I will assign bug 718962 to you.

Comment 8

[jenzed]

(In reply to Thomas D. from comment #2)
> Jen, can you verify the behaviour for MAC and Unix, and comment on the
> wording? (see questions below)
> 
> Looking at the Firefox keyboard shortcuts documentation, windows & tabs
> section (1), I found some more shortcuts which work on TB for Windows:
> 
> For Windows:
> 
> Next Tab: Ctrl+Tab or Ctrl+Page Down
> Previous Tab: Ctrl+Shift+Tab or Ctrl+Page Up
> 
> We need to verify the behaviour for MAC and Unix.
> For MAC, *Firefox* shows:
> 
> Next Tab: control + tab OR control + page down OR command + option + →
> Previous Tab: control + shift + tab OR control + page up OR command + option
> + ←
> 
> Jen,
> - on MAC OS, do we have all of these (3 each), with exactly these keys
> (control vs. command!), for Thunderbird, too?
> - does TB for Unix have the same keyboard shortcuts for this as on Windows
> (2 each)?
> 
> With regards to the caption, I chose "Switch to" because it seems to be
> slightly different from "Go to" (view another msg within the current layout)
> and "Move to" (move focus around). However, if compared with the verb-less
> captions in FF documentation, I wonder if we are actually adding much value
> or perhaps just adding confusion (about the subtle differences of
> non-technical terms) and distraction from the actual function: As a user, I
> may not care much if it's "go to", "move to", or "switch to", I just want
> the "Next Tab" - where not adding a verb allows the user to imagine
> whichever verb he likes best. So perhaps we could just have:
> 
> Proposed wording:
> 
> Next Tab: ...
> Previous Tab: ...
> 
> Jen, thoughts/preferences?
> 
> (1) http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/Keyboard%20shortcuts#w_windows-tabs

Mac:

Next Tab: Ctrl+Tab or command + option + →
Previous Tab: Ctrl+Shift+Tab or command + option + ←

(I see that sreepriya validated Linux.)

I prefer "Next tab" and "Previous tab".

Comment 9

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to jenzed from comment #8)
> (In reply to Thomas D. from comment #2)
> Mac:
> Next Tab: Ctrl+Tab or command + option + →
> Previous Tab: Ctrl+Shift+Tab or command + option + ←
> (I see that sreepriya validated Linux.)
> I prefer "Next tab" and "Previous tab".

Jen, thank you! I notified sreepriya 2 update this 4 the next revision.

So on MAC, Control+Page down/up claims to work for FF, but does not work for TB.
Does it work on FF on MAC? If yes, than we might want a bug for TB to fix this.

Comment 10

[sreepriya1111]

So I hope the following command will work.
|Next Tab
|{for win,linux}{key Ctrl+Tab}<br>{key Ctrl+Page Down}{/for}{for mac}{key Control+Tab}<br>{key Command+option+&#8594;}{/for}
|-
|Previous Tab
|{for win,linux}{key Ctrl+Shift+Tab}<br>{key Ctrl+Page Up}{/for}{for mac}{key Control+Shift+Tab}<br>{key Command+option+&#8592;}{/for}
|-

I hope the codes for the arrows are correct.

Comment 11

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to sreepriya1111 from comment #10)
> So I hope the following command will work.
> |Next Tab
> |{for win,linux}{key Ctrl+Tab}<br>{key Ctrl+Page Down}{/for}{for mac}{key
> Control+Tab}<br>{key Command+option+&#8594;}{/for}
> |-
> |Previous Tab
> |{for win,linux}{key Ctrl+Shift+Tab}<br>{key Ctrl+Page Up}{/for}{for
> mac}{key Control+Shift+Tab}<br>{key Command+option+&#8592;}{/for}
> |-

Well, it seemed to work somehow, but your table markup syntax was not correct: According to markup rules, we need || as cell separator, like this:

|-
|Next Tab||{for win,linux}{key Ctrl+Tab}<br>{key Ctrl+Page Down}{/for}{for mac}{key Control+Tab}<br>{key Command+Option+&rarr;}{/for}
|-
|Previous Tab||{for win,linux}{key Ctrl+Shift+Tab}<br>{key Ctrl+Page Up}{/for}{for mac}{key Control+Shift+Tab}<br>{key Command+Option+&larr;}{/for}
|-

> 
> I hope the codes for the arrows are correct.

Yes, they were correct, but I have replaced them with the more readable HTML entities (not everybody knows unicode numbers...):

&#8594; = &rarr; = -> (right arrow)
&#8592; = &larr; = <- (left arrow)

I also changed existing entries like {key left arrow} to {key &larr;} because [left arrow] is not a very good representation of [Cursor left]. So now it's a proper arrow, like this: [->]

Comment 12

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

done by both, sreepriya and me, I have landed this in the new revision:

https://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/keyboard-shortcuts/revision/5614

Comment 13

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Thomas D. from comment #11)
> correct: According to markup rules (1), we need || as cell separator...

Markup rules are here:

(1) https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/Markup-chart