05-22-2024 09:54 AM - edited 05-22-2024 09:58 AM
Hello Connect Community!
This is Nicole from the Fx Essentials Product Management Team. I am in the process of exploring some potential changes around hotkeys/keyboard shortcuts, as this is something that is being asked for quite a bit in the Connect Community.
I have a few questions I'd like to put out there for everyone.
1. What are your top five most used hotkeys/keyboard shortcuts?
2. What shortcuts do you wish Firefox offered?
3. Is there a non-Firefox browser you prefer because of how they 'do' hotkeys/shortcuts?
As always, thank you in advance for contributing to this discussion! Looking forward to hearing all of your answers!
Thanks!
Nicole
05-22-2024 12:56 PM
I personally don't really want to have fixed added shortcuts but the ability to edit shortcuts. That way, one I would never use becomes useful or alternatively I can swap around a shortcut that I rarely use with one that makes more sense in terms of what key it is.
Regarding "is there another browser?" I use Chrome as an alternative, but not because of hotkey. The reason is that I've found Firefox to have become increasingly unstable in the latest Ubuntu, freezing at random times on random sites with no apparent pattern and on different machines. However, I much prefer Firefox as a long term user for their bookmarks management and layout, but to be honest I'd leave it behind due to it's unreliability if I could make Chrome match that. It's turning out to be far more reliable. Apologies for going off topic, but you did ask that question and I'm glad someone is at last looking at hotkeys as a user edit choice.
05-23-2024 11:20 AM
Thanks for your input! I am hearing from a LOT of users that custom hotkeys is the way to go. It's pretty high on the list of ways to approach this!
05-29-2024 06:21 PM
As I'm watching these answers unfold, I think they can easily be categorised as follows:
1) A request for the ability for a user to remap the keys used
2) Those requesting particular current hotkeys for certain functions to be changed to more standard or alternative keystrokes
3) Those asking for functions not currently implemented on a variety of hotkeys
It seems that implementing (1) also then solves (2) without you necessarily changing any current hotkeys. The advantage of leaving the current hotkeys as they are are that there will be lots of Firefox only users who use them as is or prefer them and you'll just get a different lot of users complaining- plus you won't need to remap your own software! And the "we're happy" users won't be replying to this thread as it's not something they are bothered about, but they will complain when their favourite hotkeys change or stop working.
Regarding (3), implementing (1) as a priority then leaves you able to look at the requested functions rather than the particular chosen keys and then implementing them on what free keys there are. People can then remap to their preferred combinations, based on an assumption that I'm making that people are possibly asking for the same function but giving different hotkeys depending on where they are coming from.
Finally, for those who might complain along the lines of "I've got 500 machines to change..." or so people can backup or pass over the user selected keystrokes to other users, make sure they can be saved/reloaded in a file which carries through on with any Firefox updates. This might be specially of use to game players who might want to have different optimised keystrokes for different games or want to pass around a custom keyboard layout to fellow players.
Finally, in the words of the great and late Stan Lee- 'Nuff said!
05-29-2024 11:19 PM
purr-fect.
Seems the best way to do things to me too. adding functions to specific hotkeys can then be done via extension.
I don't even think integrating a script interpreter launcher as an option for hotkey is necessary.
06-09-2024 12:19 PM
Hello,
I am glad that this is still being discussed and I second this. I also would like the feature of customizable hotkeys. I prefer Firefox, but since I am more familiar with the chromium browsers, I find it to be difficult to switch to Firefox because of muscle memory. Being able to remap the keys to a my preference and then export this configuration to my other devices would make me very happy.
06-12-2024 03:04 AM
Great points. Especially thanks for the reminder that those shortcut settings will need to be ready for export/import.
In most cases I need your point 1 (and this since years, by the way). Remapping shortcuts, for me it's a must, because of
06-23-2024 09:59 AM
additionally I do kinda understand why you changed some things to be like Chromium but also would prefer to have a predefined Firefox set that has backspace and ctrl+shift+b working as expected without the need to alter them separately
10-29-2024 09:12 AM - edited 10-29-2024 09:13 AM
.
05-22-2024 01:11 PM - edited 05-22-2024 01:56 PM
I commonly use the following hotkeys:
My problem with hotkeys is that I accidentally "bump" the shortcut to navigate to a blank tab and lose work. On the keyboard that I use (Kinesis Advantage2), this is a simple finger slip that's very easy to make. I used to override this keyboard shortcut with an extension (Shortkeys), but now that does not work.
Other users have different motivations for customization, detailed in the Customizable hotkeys topic.
05-23-2024 11:25 AM
Yeah, that is a very cool looking keyboard and I can see how it might be easy to bump hotkeys while using it! You mention others and their motivation for customization, but you didn't mention anything about you? Would customizable hotkeys be something you'd use? Thank you!
06-16-2024 06:19 PM - edited 06-16-2024 06:26 PM
The minimum customization that I desire is the ability to disable certain hotkeys. Whatever combination navigates to a new blank tab has caused me to lose work on multiple occasions. See my comment from Feb 2024.
Ideally, there would be an interface that displays actions and their current keyboard shortcut. Users could add, remove, change, or reset-to-default the shortcut for any action.
05-22-2024 02:03 PM
Hello !
I have rough note I have been keeping to document all my frustration related to setting keybinds in a game.
I presume most of these would apply to a firefox keybind editor windows
Please forgive its rough state
Also remember that mouse and joysticks are used to control applications
I would also like to trigger custom scripts such as bookmarklets with keybind
Now the list
Always allow to rebind a key even if already set
always allow unbind all keys
allow to change HOLD vs TOGGLE
ability to bind different keys for hold or toggle of an action
always have action to raise/lower image brightness
if key already bind, option to go to conflicting binding
if key already bin, allow to override
always allow to set a key to multiple actions
always allow one action to have many keys
always allow actions to bound to keyboard / mouse and/or controller
in game non-mandatory keybinding review and tutorial and setting wizard for all actions
in game tool tip shows keys currently bound for the needed tutorial action
button to CLEAR ALL BINDING
DO NOT prevent player from rebinding a key to a key that is already use. Either allow one key to be bound to multiple actions, or unbind the key from the other action. And don't swap the keybinding of the two actions
UNRELATED
always allow console easily
always allow to change the RENDER resolution
------
delete all the keybind
not too easy to accidentaly reset default keybind
not too easy to not save your keybind changes
can you unbind a key
what happens when you try to bind an already bound key
how hard is it to find keybind duplicates, is it even alloweed
can you bind a second key
can you bind mouse or joystick to anything
is the keybind layout confusing
can you easily change between toggle and hold style of keybind
can you have more than one bind per action
how annoying is it to set a keybind
explanation of keybinding when you mouseover
helicopter/on foot/vehicule conflict should not be stupid
Show keybind keyboard layout on screen
05-23-2024 11:29 AM
These are great notes, thank you so much! It's interesting that you mentioned gaming - that's one of the things I'm currently studying as far as how they handle hotkeys/customization. Do you do a lot of gaming with keyboards? Or are you mostly controllers and joysticks?
05-23-2024 11:40 PM
I play a lot of co-op gaming with friends and every time we try a new game, keybinding are almost always an issue. We talk about it while we do it and these are the observation we came up with. Games are very inconsistent in they keybinding schemes. For me I always put moving forward on the right mouse button and many games just don't expect that.
I largely do keyboard and mouse, except racing with a steering wheel and flight based with a HOTAS (joystick and throttle)
One game of particular note is Elite Dangerous, we call it "Elite Dangerous Keybinding simulator" while having very thorough controls, is extremely tedious to do and is the source of many elements on the list.
Ah that reminds me I need to add "keybinding dialog needs a search engine that filter outs actions"
One game that surprised us recently is Dying Light 2 that had a very nicely crafted system and introduced a surprising innovation. Almost every action, can be set to press, hold, toggle for the key trigger. That was great, often the developper decides the key mode and it cannot be changed. Plus this also allow to stack multiple actions on a single button. Like R for reload but long-press R for changing ammo type.
05-22-2024 02:09 PM
05-22-2024 02:18 PM
I agree ctrl+shift+t should not be reopen last closed tab
It should be ctrl+shift+w, as in reverse of close tab which is ctrl+w
This would free ctrl+shift+t to open new private tab
I would also make HOLD+ctrl+shift+t to a new tab selector, that lets you choose, normal tab, private tab, new firefox instance(+profile switcher) and new selected multi account container (+vpn switcher)
05-22-2024 02:19 PM
There are two conversations to be had here.
What should be the default keybinds
And
How to make a keybind editor
05-23-2024 11:34 AM
Thank you for your response! Just our of curiosity, are there any other hotkeys that are different between Firefox and Chrome that are a big pain in the butt like the one you just described? Another thing you brought up - settings. Anything we end up doing with hotkeys should definitely be more prominent - I agree, it's hard to find them as is. We will be working very closely with the settings team to ensure we can make hotkeys more accessible in whatever form they land.
06-06-2024 03:04 PM
ctrl + shift + a : to search tabs. I don't much mind re-learning new private browser, it's simple enough but the shortcut to search tabs is the most clunky bit of my FF migration. Ctrl+L to focus, then %, then space. It's not even a hotkey, it's a sequence.
05-23-2024 12:50 AM
about the hotkeys I use the most, from the top of my head:
- F5
- previous/next page
- Ctrl+tab
- ctrl +N /ctrl + W
- pgup/pgdn, ctrl+pgup/ctrl+pgdwn
- tab and shift tab for forms.
- ctrl + f
Someone probably gave you this, but, just in case, you should check this thread:
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/customizable-hotkeys/idi-p/4979
05-24-2024 12:25 PM
Yes! I am very aware of that post! 🙂
My main purpose for starting this discussion was to double check a few things I had a hunch on. I'm a research nerd at heart, I want to cover all my bases before I commit to a solution! 🙂
05-23-2024 01:50 AM
One thing that I miss from Safari is the ability to click on the close button on a browser tab along with the "option" key. When I do that on Safari, all other tabs besides the tab that I clicked on will be closed. I would love to see that ability on Firefox.
05-24-2024 12:26 PM
Noted! Thank you for the suggestion! It's on my list!
05-23-2024 04:26 AM
I want to customize keyboard shortcut functionality. The user sets a key combination to perform some operations. If the key combination is repeated, a prompt will pop up.
05-23-2024 05:47 AM
I believe the most important thing would be giving an option for users to edit hotkeys as they want, feels like a basic feature that is missing to be honest, as the default hotkeys might conflict with other sites or apps, or the user simply has different preferences or needs depending on their keyboard and/or disability. Besides, it's apparently a feature that has been requested for years: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/customizable-hotkeys/idi-p/4979
05-23-2024 11:15 AM
I REALLY wish you could move around on webpages with hjkl, that would be a HUGE life improvement.
05-23-2024 11:19 AM
Check out the Vimium extension.
05-23-2024 11:32 AM - edited 05-23-2024 11:34 AM
The main reason I use Chrome instead of Firefox is because of its ability to change key bindings, in my case via the Keyboard Shortcuts extension which provides access to all available shortcuts for the browser and my extensions.
The most common shortcuts I personally use in Chrome are:
05-31-2024 01:11 PM
Firefox has a similar feature to customize extension shortcuts (See: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/manage-extension-shortcuts-firefox). The only missing piece is to customize the browser ones (e.g. Ctrl+t to open new tab)
.
05-23-2024 11:45 PM - edited 05-23-2024 11:46 PM
This issue is a major accessibility concern that will have positive "curb cut" effect on all users not just impaired persons
As such it should be possible to get a accessibility grant for this
However if you want to remap firefox keybindings today
You can use the Microsoft powertoys
https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys
The "Keyboard manager component"
Here for example I remap reopen previous tab from CTRL+SHIFT+T to CTRL+SHIFT+W
05-24-2024 04:14 PM
Some really great suggestions have already been made here! I particularly agree with the following:
I would also like to add that it should be possible to configure shortcuts WITHOUT any prefixes. Way too many applications only allow users to configure hotkeys that are prefixed with `Ctrl`, `Alt`, etc. These can be hard to perform for people with limited hand mobility. We should instead also be able to configure shortcuts like `x` to close a tab.
05-24-2024 04:23 PM
This is a great point about being able to use single keys. One of the reasons some shortcuts work well is because I can use one hand for shortcuts whilst not removing my other from the mouse. The converse of this is also true, especially those that use three keys. which slow me down and are more prone to errors Given that in most cases I personally only actually use a few shortcuts, I can easily assign them to one hand use or obvious keys. Tied to this is also using consistent keys for certain actions, something that is a pain across different software where they choose different keys.
05-24-2024 08:54 PM
I'd like to get a custom hotkey option like everyone else in this thread but if we can't get that, at least please use a unified set of hotkeys with other major browsers, after using opera or chrome for a long period of time pressing CTRL+SHIFT+N to open a new private window in firefox and just failing to do so is really annoying. All the chromium based browsers use that same hotkey (vivaldi, brave, etc.) so it's really confusing why firefox decided to single itself out of it.
Hotkeys are there to be used subconsciously, I don't deliberately press each individual key hundreds of times throughout the day. After pressing CTRL+SHIFT+N whenever I need to open a private page in other browsers continuously, I've reinforced that circuitry so much so that I just can't alter it when I'm using firefox. I also tend to use private windows whenever I sidetrack from my work to search a relevant stuff, to watch a tutorial, etc. If I don't want to add onto the pile of innumerable open tabs as I'm working on a project, I simply open a private tab, check something and won't muddle my history or google/yt algorithm with something minor.
To answer your question directly so that you'd get some more relevant data:
1. Right now I'm using brave CTRL+T (open a new tab and jump into it), CTRL+W (close the current tab), CTRL+TAB (move to the tab on the right), CTRL+SHIFT+TAB (move to the tab on the left), CTRL+SHIFT+N (open a new private window).
2. CTRL+SHIFT+N (open a new private window)
3. I'd prefer any other browser to firefox just because they all use the same hotkey for opening a new private window. I'm currently using Brave due to non-hotkey related reasons.
06-06-2024 05:33 PM
This is great feedback, thank you!
05-25-2024 02:42 AM
I need a keybind, to center the current tab in the tab bar
05-25-2024 05:57 AM
if we're on the topic of suggestions, it could be a good idea to have a way of saving, sharing and even switching, hotkeys scheme. I was thinking about a file for that purpose, but it can be something else.
On top of that, it would be great to be able to share the hotkeys from device to device (like the passwords), in case of new firefox installation.
The hotkeys schemes could be shared along themes, making it a full user experience sharing.
05-29-2024 05:00 AM
Great idea
05-25-2024 06:01 AM
is it a place to suggest new function to associate with hotkeys too?
I'd love to have a hotkey to regex search, or to open the image hovered in a new tab. But it's probably not the topic here, right?
05-26-2024 02:29 AM
I use the following ones (at least I recalled them quick):
I also use Page Up, Page Down, Home, End, ↓, ↑ for navigation in page when there is a lot to read.
I am not sure I need any new hotkeys, but who knows, maybe I just can't imagine now how I would use them. I believe I miss more mouse gestures that uset to be in old Opera 12.