942269 - Make quickfind keys configurable

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Toolkit :: Find Toolbar, enhancement)

Description

[Mark Straver]

Currently, the QuickFind keys (/ for text and ' for links-only) are hard-coded in the browser and cannot be configured.

On international (non-US) keyboards, these keys are often in very unfriendly places like Shift+6 or AltGr+somekey which makes it difficult to use the feature.
It would be a great enhancement for usability of the find feature to make these keys user-configurable.

Comment 1

[Simon Dedman]

+1 for this. See also https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1231325 and https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=918376 and https://stackoverflow.com/questions/19650894/disable-slash-and-apostrophe-from-opening-quick-find-on-firefox/36205209#36205209

Previous workaround was to lower security wall then install an unsigned extension which is no longer developed. Bad practice in the first place, this no longer works. Please can devs push the hotkeys "'" and "/" to an about:config configurable so users can edit them easily?
Or even to an advanced settings GUI configurable. Thanks

Comment 2

[avada]

(In reply to Simon Dedman from comment #1)
> 
> Previous workaround was to lower security wall then install an unsigned
> extension which is no longer developed. Bad practice in the first place,
> this no longer works. Please can devs push the hotkeys "'" and "/" to an
> about:config configurable so users can edit them easily?
> Or even to an advanced settings GUI configurable. Thanks

I don't know which extension are you referring to. But keyconfig was updated by third parties. Keyconfig RDL was only shared on mozillazine, but it works.

Also there's this new fork on AMO: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/dorando-keyconfig/
I didn't try this one yet, but it's supposed to work.

Comment 3

[Simon Dedman]

previous extension was called searchhotheys. Thanks for dorando; unfortunately - unless I'm missing something - neither ' nor / are already mapped and there doesn't look to be any quicksearch/quickfind entry either...

Comment 4

[avada]

(In reply to Simon Dedman from comment #3)
> previous extension was called searchhotheys. Thanks for dorando;
> unfortunately - unless I'm missing something - neither ' nor / are already
> mapped and there doesn't look to be any quicksearch/quickfind entry either...

You have to make add them manually. 

Add these functions as code for the two kinds of quickfindbars.
gFindBar.startFind(gFindBar.FIND_TYPEAHEAD);
gFindBar.startFind(gFindBar.FIND_LINKS);

Comment 5

[Simon Dedman]

Thanks avada. Have you had any joy with this method? Having entered them, assigned keys and applied and restarted FF for good measure, "'" and "/" still open the quicksearches. But now my other key combos do as well...

Comment 6

[avada]

(In reply to Simon Dedman from comment #5)
> Thanks avada. Have you had any joy with this method? Having entered them,
> assigned keys and applied and restarted FF for good measure, "'" and "/"
> still open the quicksearches. But now my other key combos do as well...

As I said it opens the quickfindbars for the hotkeys.
Also, you failed to say that you want to disable hotkeys, and not add hotkeys for the quickfind bars. Which is what this bug is about.

It should be obvious, but you just need to add the hotkey and press the disable button, to disable that hotkey.

Comment 7

[Simon Dedman]

ah, good stuff. I wrongly inferred that adding them and setting them as something less accidentally-pressable would override the defaults. Thanks.

Comment 8

[KJ]

(In reply to avada from comment #6)
> (In reply to Simon Dedman from comment #5)
> > Thanks avada. Have you had any joy with this method? Having entered them,
> > assigned keys and applied and restarted FF for good measure, "'" and "/"
> > still open the quicksearches. But now my other key combos do as well...
> 
> As I said it opens the quickfindbars for the hotkeys.
> Also, you failed to say that you want to disable hotkeys, and not add
> hotkeys for the quickfind bars. Which is what this bug is about.
> 
> It should be obvious, but you just need to add the hotkey and press the
> disable button, to disable that hotkey.

When you say obvious I feel silly, but I cannot make it work. I've added the plugin mentioned and the codes and left them as disabled, but pressing "/" and " ' " still open the searches. If you could please elaborate on how to disable them (I use ctrl-f and need nothing more (aka wish to disable the others)

Comment 9

[Simon Dedman]

Hopefully my messy path is reproducible: make them, apply them so they're ON, restart FF, check they work, then [after reading avada's reply!] disable them, apply, restart FF.

Comment 10

[Mike de Boer [:mikedeboer]]

There appears to be an add-on that offers a reasonable workaround!
I'm afraid it's unlikely we'll spend time on this, because the quick find feature is in maintenance mode and we don't have the resources available, currently.
If you feel this issue was closed in error, please feel free to re-open.

Comment 11

[Simon Dedman]

Hi Mike,

I'm not too hot on coding but would it be possible to change whatever line of code that says:
"IF '/' pressed THEN [open quickfind]"
to
quickfindkey <- '/'
"IF {quickfindkey} pressed THEN [open quickfind]"
And thus allow users to set quickfindkey in about:config?

Comment 12

[Bob Jones]

(In reply to Mike de Boer [:mikedeboer] from comment #10)
> There appears to be an add-on that offers a reasonable workaround!
> I'm afraid it's unlikely we'll spend time on this, because the quick find
> feature is in maintenance mode and we don't have the resources available,
> currently.
> If you feel this issue was closed in error, please feel free to re-open.

If the quick find feature is in maintenance mode, could you please tell us how to just turn it off completely? I don't know if the keyconfig addon has changed in the last year, but I can't find a way of getting the instructions to work.

Alternately, if somebody could let me know how to get around the fact that the SearchHotKeys extension — which worked *perfectly* — hasn't been signed, and Firefox is ignoring the fact that xpinstall.signatures.required is set to FALSE, then that would be great too, as at the moment I'm going to revert to version 43 as at least I could get it to do what I want...

Comment 13

[jscher2000]

Another possible workaround is a userscript (tested in Greasemonkey, might also work in Tampermonkey/Violentmonkey). If this needs refinement to handle other rich text editors, you can open a discussion on the script on Greasyfork:

https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/13484-prevent-slash-opening-quickfind

Comment 14

[Wayne]

I found an addon to stop the / and ' key.

look for this addon:  Shortkeys (Custom Keyboard Shortcuts) for Firefox

Just add 2 default options to do nothing for both key. / & .

Cheers!