[Bug 66566]

[Gijskruitbosch+bugs]

Release Note Request (optional, but appreciated)
[Why is this notable]: see comment #121
[Affects Firefox for Android]: no
[Suggested wording]: not sure, maybe: "Changes to URL bar autocomplete shortcuts"
[Links (documentation, blog post, etc)]: I'll update https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/keyboard-shortcuts-perform-firefox-tasks-quickly#w_miscellaneous_2 .


(In reply to Stanley Chan from comment #121)
> It will also require documentation updates (i.e.
> https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/keyboard-shortcuts-perform-firefox-
> tasks-quickly#w_miscellaneous_2 and

I'll submit an update for this after submitting this comment; it'll need
to be approved by the SUMO admins.

> https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/keyboard-shortcuts-command-qwerty/)

I'll set user-doc-needed here for the above and to get this updated as
well.

> this is literally 15 year old behavior that is changing. It's also been
> blogged about over the years throughout various websites that cater to the
> power user (such as LifeHacker and How-To-Geek), but that's nothing that
> Mozilla controls.

No, I'm afraid if we could never update something that had been
documented anywhere else, we would have long ago stopped making Firefox
because of our inability to change pretty much anything... even our
easter eggs get documented, for better and for worse...

> That being said, can we get about:config options to configure the Ctrl-Shift
> and Shift-Enter shortcuts in the address bar?

There is already for the ctrl-enter case (you can change the suffix via
about:config's browser.fixup.alternate.suffix). We removed the shift
/ctrl-shift option completely because no other browser has those and
they didn't seem useful.

> When this feature was first
> added, .com, .net. and .org were the most popular of TLD suffixes. Today, I
> can see how that is different, and I will admit that I do not complete .net
> and .org domains as often. I agree that not many people used it, but perhaps
> it can be more accessible if a user can configure those prefixes and
> suffixes directly.

I see your point, but can I just point out that:

- shift-click/enter normally opens new windows on all other types of shortcuts / bookmark/history entries etc.
- shift-click/enter is also used for "turning off" switch-to-tab (in order to open links that you have open already a second time)
- shift when used with opening new tabs in other places (which uses 'ctrl' on Win/Linux) toggles the background/foreground-ness of tabs

so having Yet Another Possible Meaning for the 'shift' modifier here is
neither very user-friendly nor all that maintainable in the codebase we
have. In fact, even removing it caused me a few different headaches
trying to not break any of the other behaviors.

The other thing is the value proposition. You'd want this shortcut to
avoid typing '.' followed by 2-3 other characters (generally... if you
use loads of different '.americanexpress' domains and want to configure
ctrl-shift-enter for those, then I'm very sorry...). Just the
awkwardness of `ctrl-shift-enter` rather than simply typing those 3-4
chars doesn't seem very valuable to me. That's in addition to the fact
that, 15 years since this stuff was implemented, we now autofill history
for domains, so if you've visited the site before you can just hit
'enter' straightaway anyway...

We're also much more reluctant to add more magical about:config switches
that we don't expose in the "regular" options/preferences (and yet more
reluctant to add *more* things to those options).

So on the whole, I'm not excited about adding this back, not even with
configurable suffixes. If my arguments don't seem convincing, please
file a separate bug and we'll discuss there, but with 121 comments here
so far, I don't think this is the best place. :-)

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/66566

Title:
  Inconsistent shortcuts for new tab

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