The most obvious weaknesses of Firefox...

[bobkatz]

I like the reliability of Firefox and its compatibility over Safari on my Mac. But I may be going back to Safari or even Explorer soon since I am a 125 words per minute typist and I can't believe that no one has addressed two important weaknesses for typists in Firefox that go back to the very first Mozilla release:


1) MOVING BY THE WORD FROM THE KEYBOARD. My main pet peeve. When editing text and moving by the word forward (option plus right arrow in the Mac), Firefox consistently stops at EVERY space instead of in front of every word break. It does not move by the word like every other browser. For typists and people who like to keep their hand off the mouse, this is a "deal breaker". How can I get the Mozilla community to fix this simple but stultifying weakness?


2) EDITING A URL FROM THE KEYBOARD. You've added a feature that when you are in the URL address, all you need is to up or down arrow to move through previous URLs. That's nice. But the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away! Now there is no way to navigate (at least on the MacINtosh) to the beginning or end of line of the URL. On the Mac, the standard keystrokes for moving to beginning or end of line are up arrow and down arrow. On the PC it's Home and End. And on OSX Tiger I understand there's a new command plus right arrrow but I'm not sure. Anyway, I've tried every keystroke I can come up with and cannot find a way to move to the beginning of a URL to edit other than clicking with the mouse.

If you can fix these two pet peeves I'm a Firefox believer!

[old np]

What do other apps on Mac do? If Firefox is inconsistent, then I'm sure they'd want to fix it.

[Guest]

I'm on windows and #1 works the same way in firefox as the regular edit boxes so I see nothing wrong with it. Can you be more specific what you mean by that?

You can search the firefox source for the relevant command:
http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/search ... _beginLine

According to that you hold down the accel key and use the left arrow to move the caret to the start of the line. I'm not sure wtf the accel key is, but maybe you can figure it out.

[bobkatz]

I'm on windows and #1 works the same way in firefox as the regular edit boxes so I see nothing wrong with it. Can you be more specific what you mean by that?

You can search the firefox source for the relevant command:
http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/search ... _beginLine

Thanks. I went to that and then popped into the URL address and tried various combinations of command, control, shift and home and end and not a single one would take me back and forth to the beginning or end of that line. I don't know what the accel key is, either!

As for item #1 (the word editing), I should check Firefox on Windows to see if this is a Mac-specific problem. Anyone? Basically in this very line that I am typing, in the "Post A Reply" dialogue box, I hit option left arrow, and the cursor properly goes backwards to just in front of each word. But when I hit option right arrow it takes TWICE as many keystrokes to move from word to word. The cursor stops at EVERY space in front of the word, and then moves to the beginning of the word. Quite annoying. I saw that on earlier Mozilla Browsers, promptly got tired of it, rejected it and ever since I've used either Explorer or Safari.

[Guest]

The accel key is the command key on the mac. But since that obviously doesn't work for you, try changing the files to change the key bindings for cmd_beginLine cmd_endLine (and the ones that take the selection into account) as a temp hackey solution:

http://www.mozilla.org/unix/customizing.html#keys
http://www.mozilla.org/unix/customizing ... ey_example

You should open up a bugzilla account on bugzilla.mozilla.org and submit bugs for these two.

[BenBasson]

You should open up a bugzilla account on bugzilla.mozilla.org and submit bugs for these two.

...but search for existing reports first, since I'm sure you're not the only person to have spotted this.

[Jim D]

1) MOVING BY THE WORD FROM THE KEYBOARD. My main pet peeve. When editing text and moving by the word forward (option plus right arrow in the Mac), Firefox consistently stops at EVERY space instead of in front of every word break. It does not move by the word like every other browser. For typists and people who like to keep their hand off the mouse, this is a "deal breaker". How can I get the Mozilla community to fix this simple but stultifying weakness?

Works fine for me. Option-Right moves past the next word, and stops at the terminating separator char. That's consistent with other Mac apps. Were you expecting something different?

2) EDITING A URL FROM THE KEYBOARD. You've added a feature that when you are in the URL address, all you need is to up or down arrow to move through previous URLs. That's nice. But the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away! Now there is no way to navigate (at least on the MacINtosh) to the beginning or end of line of the URL. On the Mac, the standard keystrokes for moving to beginning or end of line are up arrow and down arrow. On the PC it's Home and End. And on OSX Tiger I understand there's a new command plus right arrrow but I'm not sure. Anyway, I've tried every keystroke I can come up with and cannot find a way to move to the beginning of a URL to edit other than clicking with the mouse.

Again, works fine for me. Command-Right and Command-Left do this, as they should on the Mac.

If you're not seeing this, you should try safe-mode.

-Jim

[bobkatz]

The accel key is the command key on the mac. But since that obviously doesn't work for you, try changing the files to change the key bindings for cmd_beginLine cmd_endLine (and the ones that take the selection into account) as a temp hackey solution:

http://www.mozilla.org/unix/customizing.html#keys
http://www.mozilla.org/unix/customizing ... ey_example

You should open up a bugzilla account on bugzilla.mozilla.org and submit bugs for these two.

Thanks. As for the URL editing, I stand corrected! There is a key binding and I must have gotten mixed up with the "accel" key. Because "click in the URL and then type command-left arrow or command-right arrow" does work for beginning or end of line. It's a hair inconsistent with all other browsers on the Mac, but reasonable considering that up/down arrow to move to previous/next used URLs has taken over the normal MacIntosh key code for beg-end line.

As for the "move to next word" editing, I too cannot believe that it has not been previously reported, but when I try various keyword searches in the bugzilla database I cannot find it. It's very urgent as far as I'm concerned. Hopefully it will be addressed soon. Again, thanks for leading me to the right place (bugzilla).

BK

[Jim D]

As for the "move to next word" editing, I too cannot believe that it has not been previously reported, but when I try various keyword searches in the bugzilla database I cannot find it. It's very urgent as far as I'm concerned. Hopefully it will be addressed soon.

What is "it" in this case? As I posted, this behavior works exactly as advertised, consistent with other Mac apps. If you think something isn't working, you need to provide more information.

-Jim

[bobkatz]

As for the "move to next word" editing, I too cannot believe that it has not been previously reported, but when I try various keyword searches in the bugzilla database I cannot find it. It's very urgent as far as I'm concerned. Hopefully it will be addressed soon.

What is "it" in this case? As I posted, this behavior works exactly as advertised, consistent with other Mac apps. If you think something isn't working, you need to provide more information.

-Jim

What are you saying? I disagree completely. The behavior of Firefox is NOT consistent with other Mac apps or ANY word Processing or Page layout application that has a "move by word forward command".

1) Start editing a reply to this message on the Macintosh in Firefox

2) Navigate by clicking to an earlier part of this message

3) Move from word to word forward. For every five words it will take you 10 keystrokes!

BK

[Jim D]

Ah. My fault. I'm running Deer Park, and I had neglected to go back and try it in Firefox.

You're right, Fx has a problem here. The good news is that it's fixed in Deer Park, which will eventuallly become Fx 1.1.

-Jim

[bobkatz]

Ah. My fault. I'm running Deer Park, and I had neglected to go back and try it in Firefox.

You're right, Fx has a problem here. The good news is that it's fixed in Deer Park, which will eventuallly become Fx 1.1.

-Jim

I'm glad there was a simple explanation! How can I go back into the bugzilla database and let them know it's fixed in Deer Park?


BK