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Mac OS X – go to beginning of line, or maybe not

:: Monday, October 6th, 2008 @ 4:32:10 pm

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This is driving me crazy. In Windoze-land, hitting Home will take you to the beginning of a line of text, and End will take you to the end of the line. I had grown quite used to this and relied on it a lot. In Mac OS X, the respective keyboard shortcuts are CMD-left arrow and CMD-right arrow.

The problem is that in web browsers on the Mac, CMD-left arrow is Go Back, and CMD-right arrow is Go Forward. The browsers are typically smart enough to detect whether or not your cursor is in a textarea, but that detection isn’t 100% reliable. Sometimes, I hit CMD-left arrow while I am typing inside a textarea, and the browser goes back a page; I usually lose everything I happened to be typing. I’ve probably lost a small book’s worth of text over the last two years.

Anyone have a workaround?

Popularity: 2% | San Francisco, CA | link | trackback | Oct 6, 2008 16:32:10
  • http://www.thelivingsea.com Laz

    In firefox and safari you can also use Cmd+[ to go back and Cmd+] to go forward.

  • http://echeng.com echeng

    Yeah, but I want it NOT to go forward and back when I hit CMD+left arrow and CMD+right arrow. I guess I can disable them in Firefox and get used to using CMD+[ and CMD+]…

  • http://arex.smugmug.com arex

    Hi there, been following your awesome pics for about a month. cool stuff.

    one workaround, from what I recall, is to use the up/down arrows to go to home/end. It also drives me crazy that the Home/End buttons don’t work the way they’re supposed to.

  • danielle

    Ctrl-a = beginning of line Ctrl-e = end of line

  • http://echeng.com echeng

    Hey, that is cool — I always assumed that Ctrl-a/e were only for Terminal and other unixy things, but the Firefox people are thinking! Thanks for the tip!

  • Arjan

    In fact, Cmd-Right will make Firefox take you forward a page, but as in most cases there won’t be a page to forward to, this often results in moving the cursor to the end of the current line after all.

    To see the effect: go to tinymce.moxiecode.com and from that page go forward to Examples, and then forward to Documentation. Now, go back one page. Back in the Examples change some text and hit Cmd-Left while the cursor is still within the editor. Firefox will take you back yet another page, loosing any changes you made. Here Safari would set the cursor to the start of the current line. Likewise, for Cmd-Right Firefox takes you forward to Documentation, where Safari would move the cursor to the end of the current line.

    The solution is simple: use the add-on “keyconfig” from forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=72994. After installing go to menu Tools, Keyconfig and choose Disable for the combination “Back: Cmd + Left Arrow”. Likewise disable “Forward: Cmd + Right Arrow”. That’s all. To navigate use Cmd-[ and Cmd-].

    You may also want to disable the combination “Back: Backspace”, or search the web for browser.backspace_action.

  • http://www.rhoderick.org/2010/05/firefox-bug-342564/ How Firefox Bug #342564 Kills Usability on the Mac « rhoderick.org

    [...] Mac OS X – go to beginning of line, or maybe not [...]

  • http://www.joshrhoderick.com/2010/05/how-firefoxs-command-key-bug-kills-usability-on-the-mac/ How Firefox’s Command Key Bug Kills Usability on the Mac « Josh Rhoderick

    [...] Mac OS X – go to beginning of line, or maybe not [...]

  • http://joshrhoderick.wordpress.com/2010/05/05/how-firefoxs-command-key-bug-kills-usability-on-the-mac/ How Firefox’s Command Key Bug Kills Usability on the Mac | Josh Rhoderick

    [...] Mac OS X – go to beginning of line, or maybe not [...]

  • Guest

    If you haven’t discovered it already, Control-A usually will work.

    http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1343 has a number of other useful shortcuts.

  • Thelovelyrics

    Take a look here How to go to the beginning or the end of the line in Mac?  

  • Thelovelyrics
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