Firefox 2 breaks numeric access keys
Someone of apparent good intentions tried to improve Firefox’s handling of access keys. FF 2 now wants you to add a ’shift’ key to any access key. On the surface, it sounds reasonable. The well intentioned programmer probably didn’t know about the UK recommendations for common access keys which includes almost all numerics, or how many sites are actually using numeric access keys.
This site uses numeric access keys, and I don’t care much about it being broken. I do care about our intranet, serving 300,000 being broken.
If you care, tell the developers. Vote for bug 357101.
Yes, I know Gez Lemon also wrote about it.
November 5th, 2006 at 10:42 pm
Some fellow going by the name “Spud” posted a comment on Gez Lemon’s article saying we’re making a big fuss about nothing. The fix is simple…
about:config
filter on ui.key.contentAccess and set the value to 4.
(was set to 5)
As Bruce Lawson says, “simple and intuitive.” Gotta love Bruce’s sense of humor.
December 22nd, 2006 at 4:52 am
Initially I was angry about the change, but the more I read, the more it makes sense. Still, for my selfish convenient, I would rather have the old “Alt” key back. Spud’s “intuitive” solution works perfectly for me.
January 5th, 2007 at 10:51 am
It’s fixed now. Upgrade to FF 2.0.0.1. Reset ui.key.contentAccess back to 5.