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Geoff Richards wrote:
>
> With Firefox on Linux the Ctrl-U in text boxes actually works as god
> intended. The trouble is, Firefox (and Gecko in general) has a habit of
> sometimes letting the focus wander off to who knows where. Sometimes
> that means you still get view-source, or worse, nothing happens at all
> and you've no idea what you just prodded with Ctrl-U or what it might
> have done about it.
>
> Galeon used to be even more of a fucker in this respect. You'd be there
> for five minutes trying to work out why the page refused to scroll based
> on keyboard input, giving your fingers cramps by trying to scroll with
> the mouse all the time, and eventually realise that all along you'd been
> scrolling some other tab. Thanks Galeon for that clever DWIM. Clearly
> whenever I want to use the keyboard extensively in one tab my first
> action is to hide it and look at something unrelated.
>
Man, if we're going to go there in browsers....
The stupid scroll wheel in Firefox is just crazy -- you're scrolling
down with the mouse icon in the middle of the browser, and suddenly it
stops. Why? Well, of course, because you just passed over a web object
that can scroll independently. What is this object? Why, it's an ad.
Does the ad have scroll bars? Why no, but it doesn't matter. So you
must move your mouse somewhere else, hopefully no place that can scroll,
and continue your scroll.
Which leads right into the "wtf is wrong with focus in web browsers?"
discussion. I mean, really. Why should I _ever_ be in a situation
where the scroll wheel works but typing and/or arrow keys don't work?
The scroll wheel always works on whatever the mouse is sitting over (I'm
assuming this is the case whether focus-follows-mouse is on or not, but
I've not tried it with FFM off), while the app maintains its own
definition of focus for the keyboard. So now we have the system
maintaining a per-window keyboard and mouse focus and the app
maintaining a separate focus for the keyboard and mouse. I could imagine
a more confusing interface, but it would take drugs and serious effort.
Even worse, how could I ever get into a situation where the arrow keys
or the pg{up/down} keys do nothing discernable? As already discussed,
the scroll wheel still works (assuming the mouse never passes over
anything but text), but the keyboard doesn't. Oh, but you're not using
your mouse right now, you're navigating entirely from the keyboard? In
your dreams you are. Because once some stupid website has managed to
make it so that "the whole web page" doesn't have focus, there is no
means of giving it focus via the keyboard -- you have to click, and, of
course, you have to make sure your click doesn't hit something that
results in you being taken elsewhere.
I would use my mouse soooooo much less if my web browser weren't so
freaking stupid.
Luke
There's stuff above here
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