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Unexpected behavior with "jump to end of word" keyboard shortcut on macOS

  • 3 replies
  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by crankygoat

Dave Powers
Dave Powers
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I often use the "Option+Left/Right Arrow" keyboard shortcut to navigate through text.

In Chrome and other programs, this works how I would expect it: using this site, the first press of the right arrow will move the cursors after "https" and before the ":" character. A second will move it to the end of "support" before the "." character.

However, Firefox will jump to between the "//" characters" and "support" on the first press, and will jump over the period after "support," before the word "mozilla."

This applies to the address bar, but also anywhere text is present, such as a form text area.

Strangely, moving the other direction does not skip past punctuation.

The behavior exhibited does not match that of the native operating system (moving to the end of a word, excluding punctuation) so I find it somewhat jarring. Is this something that could potentially be changed by a config and/or fixed at the application level?

Thanks.

I often use the "Option+Left/Right Arrow" keyboard shortcut to navigate through text. In Chrome and other programs, this works how I would expect it: using this site, the first press of the right arrow will move the cursors after "https" and before the ":" character. A second will move it to the end of "support" before the "." character. However, Firefox will jump to between the "//" characters" and "support" on the first press, and will jump over the period after "support," before the word "mozilla." This applies to the address bar, but also anywhere text is present, such as a form text area. Strangely, moving the other direction does not skip past punctuation. The behavior exhibited does not match that of the native operating system (moving to the end of a word, excluding punctuation) so I find it somewhat jarring. Is this something that could potentially be changed by a config and/or fixed at the application level? Thanks.

All Replies (3)

crankygoat
crankygoat
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Yes, the key combination is not defined in keyboard shortcuts at all. You can see for Mac and FF 73 here: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/keyboard-shortcuts-perform-firefox-tasks-quickly?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=Keyboard+shortcuts#w_editing

Unfortunately there is no way to change this unless Mozilla codes it into Firefox. This seems to be a defect, with so many undefined behaviors.

The closest bug listed is this one: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=589726 Odd there is not a bug covering all the undefined key combinations.

You might try Ctrl + → or ← just to see if that works as in other operating systems.

Dave Powers
Dave Powers Question owner
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Thanks for confirming my suspicions. In case anyone comes across this thread via a search, I've gone ahead and opened a bug report.

crankygoat
crankygoat
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I hope they address all of the unassigned shortcuts for Mac users. Good work. Best wishes for this.