Gmail & Firefox & the Mac keyboard?

question blockDear LazyWeb,

Do any of you fine Mac folks know how to get the Command-Left-Arrow and Command-Right-Arrow keyboard shortcuts working when editing a message in Gmail? In every other application, and in fact in every other website under Firefox, they do the regular system “beginning of line” and “end of line” positioning. For some reason, with Gmail’s email editor, they do nothing at all. I assume it has something to do with it being a RichText editing box. Google searches for help don’t turn up much of anything useful.

The keyboard inconsistency is one of those things that isn’t a total deal-breaker because I can use the happy Unix ctrl-a and ctrl-e keystrokes to do the same thing, but it’s been bugging me for months.

Posted in: Dear Diary Questions

6 thoughts on “Gmail & Firefox & the Mac keyboard?”

  1. Did you ever figure this out? I am a new Mac user and this is driving me insane–even more insane than I am that the “home/end” keys don’t work as they do in every single other OS I’ve ever used and I now have to press two keys to go to the beginning or end of a line of text (a far more common task than going to the beginning or end of a page).

  2. @Allen: I never did figure this out. To go to the beginning of a line (Cmd-left-arrow), I end up hitting ctrl-arrow a lot to navigate within the message. The home/end thing does not bother me as much because it has been years since I used Windows and have gotten used to the Mac way of how to navigate with the keyboard. It is just that Gmail is the ONE place in the WHOLE operating system that does not conform with that Mac way of keyboard navigation, which keeps bugging me!

  3. Hello, when using Firefox with GMail you can:

    1. switch to plain text (just click “plain text” below the subject line) and the Cmd+RightArrow / Cmd+LeftArrow will work.
    2. remain in the rich text editor (in the e-mail) and use Control-E (end of line) / Control-A (beginning of line).

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