Allow Esc to exit Full Screen mode in addition to F11

[Wezarus]

Currently, exiting the Full Screen mode of Pale Moon is possible only by pressing F11. Since Esc is the universal key for the "exit" function, I think it would be good if it were added as an alternative key. I know I always keep pressing it first and only then realize I have to press F11 again to exit.

[dark_moon]

F11 is in all programs the shortcut to open & close full screen so this is a standard behavior.
While esc means cancel.

And isn't one shortcut not enough?

[PMUser66]

Currently, exiting the Full Screen mode of Pale Moon is possible only by pressing F11. Since Esc is the universal key for the "exit" function, I think it would be good if it were added as an alternative key. I know I always keep pressing it first and only then realize I have to press F11 again to exit.

^^^I do that every.single.time. I have always wanted this myself. The ESC button is just so much easier to access/reach/get to.

F11 is in all programs the shortcut to open & close full screen so this is a standard behavior.
While esc means cancel.

And isn't one shortcut not enough?

While all you say is true it still does not dispute the fact that hitting the ESC button is a whole lot easier than trying to find the F11 (without looking). I still cannot hit the F11 without looking away from my screen and down at the keyboard after all of these years; especially when time and again over the years I occasionally replace my keyboards and they each have their own arrangement (spaced out, cramped together, thin keyboard, wide keyboard, split-key keyboard) etc,.

I am an online MMO gamer amongst other things and in games (EQ, EQ2, WoW, DAoC, SWTOR...the list goes on) ESC is the common button to close in-game windows and user interface elements. 17 years of gaming makes a helluva habit to break. Hitting that ESC key is too damn easy and I often have my left-hand middle-finger to the left side of it or hovering over it; so many things besides just gaming uses that ESC key. And it doesn't help that sites such as Youtube and others use the ESC key to exit full screen videos. It only enforces and continues the habit of using the ESC key.

For me, the ESC button would be ideal and is what I always wished browsers and the Windows OS would have used for exiting maximized/full screen windows. It's not that one shortcut isn't enough, it's that for some people, it has now become the WRONG shortcut (F11)!

EDIT: Coincidentally, I came to the forums tonight to post a question in reference to the full screen mode. Being a good soldier, I did a forum-wide search first and I saw this thread. I have been in and out of full screen mode all night tonight working and I grumbled quite a bit each time I had to toggle full-screen on and off because... yeah... I kept trying to exit using the ESC key but had to find that dang F11 instead!

Anyhow, moving on to my own new topic (forum post) now...

[Advid]

Even if F11 is a de-facto standard key for toggling full screen mode in (most) browsers, this doesn't mean it's a sensible choice.

If the user is still in power, this kind of shortcut could have a configuration option to use any key :
Esc or some multimedia key on extended keyboard.
With the later it would be even easier to enter full screen mode without looking at the keyboard and targeting that F11 key.

When I think about it: what stops me using full screen mode much more is that
- shortcut key is not easy enough to strike
- some systems have an annoying delay to re-flow the screen layout
- after full screen, there is a Palemoon delay before the address bar and tabs bar retract, causing another layout re-flow (well, just a scroll)
- an other application grab the focus upon exiting the full screen mode (as I just tested it on Windows)

[New Tobin Paradigm]

There should be a toolbar button for that in the palette and there is a pref that controls the inital hiding of the navigation toolbox containg the toolbars when first going full screen.. As for escape .. Just not the best idea to change expected behaver.

[PMUser66]

As for escape .. Just not the best idea to change expected behaver.

I am not expecting a hard-coded change from F11 to ESC, but I would love to have an option to change that in the preferences. Maybe a better solution to changing expected and standard behaviors of F11 and ESC would be to add an option to assign a keyboard shortcut to toggle full screen mode on and off? This way F11 remains the same and ESC remains the same but we can still toggle full screen on/off with something easier for us?

Thanks for listening anyways.

[Moonchild]

You know, this is getting really confusing.

On one hand we have people who press Esc on a full-screen element when the browser is full-screen and complain that it cancels full-screen mode.
Then we have this request here that requests full-screen to be canceled with Esc.

We obviously can't satisfy both.

[PMUser66]

You know, this is getting really confusing.

On one hand we have people who press Esc on a full-screen element when the browser is full-screen and complain that it cancels full-screen mode.
Then we have this request here that requests full-screen to be canceled with Esc.

We obviously can't satisfy both.

Hi Moonchild. I was editing my previous post while you made yours. My first draft was worded a little awkward. I am not sure if you are directing your reply specifically at me or not.

I do not know how much of the online population watches videos at Youtube or elsewhere but I can suppose that a great many people do and in a general sense you can say Youtube and the rest of them are setting the trend so to speak. I forgot how exactly Steve Jobs said it at his '98 conference but he said something along the lines of "Whatever Apple and Microsoft does becomes the standard that everyone else follows." (something like that). Anyhow, all I mean is that with Youtube's standard functionality of hitting the ESC key to exit full screen videos - I would imagine more and more people are becoming accustomed to that use and behavior. So I don't think it'd really be too jarring if we had the option to exit full screen browser mode with the ESC key or at least the personal choice to set that option.

Again, thanks for listening.

[coffeebreak]

Maybe a better solution to changing expected and standard behaviors of F11 and ESC would be to add an option to assign a keyboard shortcut to toggle full screen mode on and off? This way F11 remains the same and ESC remains the same but we can still toggle full screen on/off with something easier for us?

There's an extension -- keyconfig -- that allows for remapping keyboard shortcuts. I just gave it a very quick try -- It installed on 26.0.2 and seemed compatible. It was possible to remap Full Screen from F11 to ESC (but could not keep both commands) and ESC did seem to continue to work also as a stop command.

[Mercury]

I would support the option. The issue I see is that Esc is already a shortcut for "Stop".
If you're in fullscreen mode and a page is loading, what should pressing Esc do?

[Thehandyman1957]

There's an extension -- keyconfig -- that allows for re-mapping keyboard shortcuts. I just gave it a very quick try -- It installed on 26.0.2 and seemed compatible. It was possible to re-map Full Screen from F11 to ESC (but could not keep both commands) and ESC did seem to continue to work also as a stop command.

Ahh, another great extension So I fiddled with this add on a bit and after examining all the taken short cuts I found that my Pause/break button was not being used. So since that button is on the exact opposite side of my keyboard I just re-assigned the stop key to this and then assigned the Esc key for full screen. I too really like the idea of not having to look at the keyboard to escape/enter full screen.

And here is another reason to love Pale Moon. It's obvious that Moon Child cannot cater to every one of us and our desires (though I'm sure he tries) and it is the wonder of Pale Moon and it's ability to use Firefox add-on's that makes it work the way we want it to.

Thank you coffeebreak for the great add on link.

[PMUser66]

There's an extension -- keyconfig -- that allows for re-mapping keyboard shortcuts. I just gave it a very quick try -- It installed on 26.0.2 and seemed compatible. It was possible to re-map Full Screen from F11 to ESC (but could not keep both commands) and ESC did seem to continue to work also as a stop command.

Thanks coffeebreak. I'll check it out tomorrow.