MozillaZine

IE Ctrl+Enter Add-On for Mozilla 1.1

Thursday September 5th, 2002

Oliver Schulze has written an add-on for Mozilla 1.1 that emulates Internet Explorer's Ctrl+Enter behaviour (adds "www." to the beginning and ".com" to the end of what you have typed into the Location Bar). A fair bit of tweaking is required to set up this add-on but it's worth it if you're addicted to this particular aspect of Internet Explorer.

#1 Thank you so much

by bjornte

Friday September 6th, 2002 1:43 AM

First I would like to say: I have full respect for the contributors to the Mozilla project. The work they do is great! But the comment of this poster is ridiculous: "A fair bit of tweaking is required to set up this add-on but it's worth it if (...)"

Come on! Things like this must be in the real code. If not, and if it requires manual work to set up, a big user base will never gain access to it. This has to be the rule for all such usability extensions.

By the way, is there a good site for introduction to the Moz-benefits, like tabbing, and all the enjoyable shortcuts, like shift-ctrl-click? I think a flash movie could to much good. Does it exist, or should a non-programming community member contribute with a presentation?

#2 Re: Re: Re: result....:(

by darinf

Friday September 6th, 2002 2:21 AM

<< Come on! Things like this must be in the real code. If not, and if it requires manual work to set up, a big user base will never gain access to it. This has to be the rule for all such usability extensions. >>

The readme from that link explains. This isn't really an addition of functionality, it is a _change_ of functionality:

Will Mozilla ever have this feature? No, Mozilla developers decided that this feature is not needed. Mozilla already use the key combination Ctrl+Enter for opening new windows.

Is there a Bug number in bugzilla? Sure, but it is closed as WONFIX. Bug #37867

- Darin

#3 Yes, but...

by leafdigital

Friday September 6th, 2002 3:38 AM

Given that there are apparently some people who'd like the feature as an option, it would be nice to include it as such.

I presume the reason it hasn't been is that you can't put an option for *everything* or the preferences dialog would be even more humungous than it already is.

What should ideally happen would be if some nice person could make an xpinstall for this, so that you could install with a single click, but I don't know if that is possible or not.

#4 And also...

by jsebrech

Friday September 6th, 2002 5:15 AM

What mozilla needs is an extra's page linked to from within the menu's, where all the xpinstall files for that mozilla version with a short explanation of what they do are listed. So users just have to click to have new functionality. That way every time there's this discussion about whether something should be included or not it can be put on the extra's page.

Mozdev is nice, but it's hard to find, and there are no quality guarantees. Besides, mozdev is about entire apps. This extra's page would be about single prefs.

#21 Re: Extra page for XPinstall add-on

by oliversl

Monday September 16th, 2002 1:58 AM

This is a great idea! I searching for examples for making a XPInstall of the patch. If someone has a quick tutorial, it would be fine. I only need an XPInstall that replaces the file: comm.jar:/content/navigator/navigator.js

Any help is welcome!

Thanks Oliver

#20 Configure key-combinations in Mozilla

by nirwana

Tuesday September 10th, 2002 2:25 AM

> "Mozilla already use the key combination Ctrl+Enter for opening new windows....(or new tabs) "

Mozilla allows quite a deal of customization. To be able to suit most user's needs there should be a generic way in the Prefs-panel to customize what combinations of keys performs what action. However, I believe that the way Mozilla is build something like that is quite hard to configure. Or am I wrong here ? Please tell me that such an addon is easy to create.

#8 Re: Re: Re: Re: result....:(

by bugs4hj

Friday September 6th, 2002 8:34 AM

"Mozilla already use the key combination Ctrl+Enter for opening new windows. "

OR it can open a new tab if that is what you want ;)

#10 Re: Thank you so much

by AlexBishop

Friday September 6th, 2002 9:03 AM

Just to be clear, the phrase:

"A fair bit of tweaking is required to set up this add-on but it's worth it if you're addicted to this particular aspect of Internet Explorer."

... was written by me and was not in Oliver Schulze's original submission (I didn't directly quote any of Oliver's submission, just paraphrased it).

Alex

#5 and why .com??

by rein

Friday September 6th, 2002 6:22 AM

There is more in this world than just .com-sites. And b.t.w., www is not always needed when searching for websites. Mozilla is fine as it is now, please don't copy IE-stuf just for copying.

#6 Alternatively...

by Uri

Friday September 6th, 2002 7:47 AM

Alternatively, you could: - create a bookmark to http://www.%s.com/ and give it a simple keyword like $, allowing you to just type '$ microsoft' in the location bar. - or better still, configure your internet keywords (see http://www.mozilla.org/docs/end-user/internet-keywords.html) to perform an I Feel Lucky search on Google, which will nearly always get you where you want.

This gives you the best of both worlds, as CTR-ENTER will still allow you to open your requests in a new tab or window.

Uriel

#9 Re: Alternatively...

by bugs4hj

Friday September 6th, 2002 8:51 AM

This is the correct http://www.mozilla.org/docs/end-user/internet-keywords.html

#11 Re: Alternatively...

by bmacfarland

Friday September 6th, 2002 11:53 AM

I agree that it is better, but the Ctrl + Enter combination is something that some people are so used to (like say a mouse gesture) that it's required for Mozilla to have that before they switch. I'm an idealist who doesn't see the world as all .com, but the small realist in me says that there's a enough demand for this functionality, that it should be a preference with the default set to work as Moz does now (without ctrl + enter) at most. At least there should be an xpinstall to get ctrl + enter functionality (which shouldn't be to far from where we are). Why not have the ability to do both with the Internet Keywords for the people who want it (like me) and the cntl+enter for the others?

#7 Ra

by Kovu

Friday September 6th, 2002 8:30 AM

I already use the feature that allows you to open a new tab by typing in a URL and pressing Ctrl+Enter. Wouldn't setting this IE feature up hose that?

-JR

#12 Hmm

by locka

Friday September 6th, 2002 12:52 PM

Mozilla already has a fixup service. It would be better to invoke that from js when ctrl+enter is pressed. Just get the service ("@mozilla.org/docshell/urifixup;1") and call nsIURIFixup::createFixupURI() with FIXUP_FLAGS_MAKE_ALTERNATE_URI in the second argument.

e.g. (pseudo-js)

const nsIURIFixup = Components.interfaces.nsIURIFixup; var fixup = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/docshell/urifixup;1"].getService(nsIURIFixup) newURI = fixup.createFixupURI("foo", nsIURIFixup.FIXUP_FLAGS_MAKE_ALTERNATE_URI);

#13 Hmm

by locka

Friday September 6th, 2002 12:53 PM

Code got wrapped onto one line, but it's simple enough to extract.

#14 What is the point?

by Mike_S

Friday September 6th, 2002 6:34 PM

Perhaps I'm missing the point of this feature but too me it seems completely redundant.

IE needs "Ctrl+Enter" because if you type a keyword directly into the URL field it'll redirect to MSN search, which slows things down.

Mozilla automatically enters www and .com if you simply type in a domain name thus making "Ctrl+Enter" unnecessary. The need for Ctrl+Enter is one of the things that I dislike about IE.

In fact, Mozilla takes it a step further allowing you to type a domain and path without the need for www and .com (apple/quicktime/trailers for example) I use that all the time and it's great.

#15 Re: What is the point?

by mwexler

Saturday September 7th, 2002 3:12 PM

Actually, in your example, Mozilla 1.1 will search the local intranet for a site called apple. Then, after not finding it, it will then add the www and .com. That seems great, but on my 1gh machine with loads of ram, Moz 1.1 takes about 12 seconds to finally get around to fixing the link. IE with Ctrl-Enter does it in a split second.

Useful is the dropdown which is smart enough to put www.apple.com as I type apple, but that's still different than the autopilot one gets from just typing "apple", Ctrl-enter, done.

Michael

#16 I thought the beauty of open source...

by 1qwertyu

Sunday September 8th, 2002 8:02 AM

...was that you could do what you want with it. This guy saw a feature he wanted and built it. It doesn't change your life or how you use mozilla in the least. If people want this feature, they can do his rather complex intallation. If no one else wants it, then he can enjoy it all on his own I don't see what everyone is so upset about it. If more people responded like this guy when they wanted a a feature instead of doing what non-programmers like me do (filling out a bugzilla feature request), this program would grow and improve even faster than it already does.

#17 This might sound perverse ...

by KiaserZohsay

Monday September 9th, 2002 7:08 AM

...but has anyone considered doing (or done) and IE look-alike theme? If you're going for IE behavior to make IE uses feel at home, why not give them the look they're used to as well?

kz

#18 Re: This might sound perverse ...

by AlexBishop

Monday September 9th, 2002 12:29 PM

"...but has anyone considered doing (or done) and IE look-alike theme? If you're going for IE behavior to make IE uses feel at home, why not give them the look they're used to as well?"

You mean like this http://mozillako.hypermart.net/ieskin/ ?

Alex

#19 Re: Re: This might sound perverse ...

by bamm

Monday September 9th, 2002 10:31 PM

Hmm... I got a free ad! Thank Alex. :)

#22 Patch for Mozilla 1.2a available

by oliversl

Saturday September 21st, 2002 2:34 PM

The new navigator.js for Mozilla 1.2a is in: http://www.geocities.com/oliversl/mozilla/ The patch is in Bug #37867