You’re not going to convince me not to use Firefox. I’m allowed to rant about it without people trying to push other browsers on me. I’ve already tried Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Galeon, Dillo, Lynx, and Ka… Kaha… whatever that other browser is.

Sigh.

That stupid new Control-Q keyboard shortcut, though. Control-W (close tab) is a regular part of my browsing experience. I open tabs. I close tabs. But then Firefox recently added in Control-Q (quit Firefox) as a keyboard shortcut. It sounds like a good idea. I’m actually a big fan in general of the Cmd-Q (Mac OS X) and Control-Q (KDE) approach. There should be a relatively easy way to quit an application (Alt-F4 is not a comfortable keyboard combination for me).

But, of course, Control-Q (quit Firefox) is now right next to Control-W (close tab), and I often find myself quitting when I want to just close a tab. Yes, I know I can have Firefox confirm when I want to close, but I don’t want it to confirm… I just don’t want it to close. If someone knows of an about:config trick to turn off Control-Q, let me know. In the meantime, I have Firefox set to open with the same tabs from my last session.

10 Responses to “I can’t say I’m a fan of this new keyboard shortcut in Firefox”

  1. Ryan W Says:

    Not sure of an easy about:config trick, but I’ve been using the keyconfig extension for awhile now, and you can pretty easily change/disable keyboard shortcuts using it.

  2. Scott Says:

    You know, you’ve got a point there, and for some reason Gnome’s mappable keyboard shortcuts don’t apply in Firefox. Good luck man, I feel your pain. There’s always that Vim Firefox extension if you’re intense enough to use it, hehe.

  3. ubuntucat Says:

    I can’t find the keyconfig extension.

    I can find an extension that says it’s functions for the keyconfig extension, but it’s also not available for Firefox 3.

  4. Ben Says:

    Eeek! That is a terrible idea. In my opinion anything that does a full shutdown of a program needs to be at least three characters long! I can maybe see ctrl+shift+q. Silly mozilla noobs.

  5. HollyB Says:

    -chuckle- I must confess I have never had this problem. Aside from the fact I rarely use Ctrl+w to close a tab, I use the Dvorak keyboard for the vast majority of my computer usage, and ‘w’ and ‘q’ are at the equivalent of ‘,’ and ‘x’, respectively. Good luck in your search!

  6. Clinton Skakun Says:

    I never even use a Ctrl+W, didn’t even know it existed, thanks for telling me though:D I tried the Ctrl+Q but it didn’t work, oh well. Anyways, I think it is pretty stupid…

    Thanks for stopping by my blog and commenting.:) That’s how I found this post.

  7. Anurag Panda Says:

    I would recommend Ctrl+F4 to Close Tabs.

  8. Greg Says:

    It would be nice if, like Pidgin (and other GTK programs) firefox would let you change the shortcut (or add a new one) for any function simply by going to the menu item and pressing the new shortcut.

  9. detroit/zero Says:

    in about:config type:
    browser.warnOnQuit and set it to true.

    then you’ll get your confirmation back. i don’t see a way to change it.

  10. ubuntucat Says:

    Call me picky if you want, but I don’t want to be warned every time I close multiple tabs or every time I quit (for example, if I quit by closing the window with my mouse). I just don’t want Control-Q to quit.

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