I don't want to control you, I just want to Ctrl-U. May 30, 2013 2:27 PM   Subscribe

The Ctrl-U keyboard shortcut for making links doesn't work everywhere for me. I'd like it to.

When I'm making a comment (on the Blue) I can just select text, hit ctrl-U, and get the "Please enter the site you'd like to link!" dialog box, without having to mouse over and hit the 'link' button. When I try the same on the "Post a New Thread" page, on either the Grey or the Blue, it does the usual FireFox "show source". Is this intentional, and is there any way I can get the shortcut to work everywhere?

Technical details:
Win7
FireFox 20.0.1
I do have NoScript, but have all MeFi-requested sites enabled (including googleapis.com and cloudfront.net). google-analytics and chartbeat are disabled.

(Apologies if this is in the FAQ, but I couldn't find it. In fact, I don't even see any mention of the ctrl-U shortcut there, and I have no idea how I found out about it.)
posted by benito.strauss to Feature Requests at 2:27 PM (34 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite

Yeah, we only have keyboard shortcuts available in comment textareas. We'll look into adding it to new post forms as well. Thanks for the suggestion.
posted by pb (staff) at 2:31 PM on May 30, 2013


By the way, if you weren't aware of keyboard shortcuts while commenting you can also use Ctrl-B for bold and Ctrl-I for italic.
posted by pb (staff) at 2:37 PM on May 30, 2013 [3 favorites]


Okay, thanks. You can keep this open for others to support/attack the idea if you think it's worthwhile, but as far as I'm concerned you can close this now.
posted by benito.strauss at 2:37 PM on May 30, 2013


I had no idea about Ctrl-U! Thanks!
posted by rtha at 2:41 PM on May 30, 2013


Thanks, pb. :)

Benito, kudos for the post title.
posted by zarq at 2:42 PM on May 30, 2013 [2 favorites]


pb: "By the way, if you weren't aware of keyboard shortcuts while commenting you can also use Ctrl-B for bold and Ctrl-I for italic."

April Fool's 2014 - CTRL-M to insert a random cat picture
posted by boo_radley at 2:47 PM on May 30, 2013 [6 favorites]


Is it CTRL-U for Underline?
posted by shakespeherian at 3:06 PM on May 30, 2013


No, Ctrl-U is for adding a link. Everything else that makes sense like Ctrl-L or Ctrl-K has some special function in some browser somewhere. Ctrl-U shows you the page source in Firefox, but we felt like it was ok to override that because you don't need it too often while you're composing a comment.
posted by pb (staff) at 3:09 PM on May 30, 2013


It might help to think of it as, "time to add a (Ctrl-U)RL."
posted by pb (staff) at 3:15 PM on May 30, 2013 [9 favorites]


ok, just made the keyboard shortcuts active on new post forms. Let me know if you run into problems.
posted by pb (staff) at 3:18 PM on May 30, 2013 [1 favorite]


I saw problems at the mall last night, buying naughty things at Frederick's.
posted by carsonb at 3:28 PM on May 30, 2013 [1 favorite]


Hey, that's great. It works fine on the Green for me. I can't check it on the Blue or the Grey as I've been a busy poster today; I'll verify tomorrow.

A+, would suggest again.
posted by benito.strauss at 3:30 PM on May 30, 2013


It's because the links CONTROL-YOU.
posted by GuyZero at 3:31 PM on May 30, 2013 [2 favorites]


I don't want to control you, I just want to Ctrl-U.

HIGH FIVE BRO
posted by nathancaswell at 3:32 PM on May 30, 2013 [3 favorites]


Holy crap, I learned something new today! Yay!
posted by SuperSquirrel at 3:32 PM on May 30, 2013 [1 favorite]


OMG Ctrl-U is amazing, I especially like how it autoselects http:// so if you paste you don't end up with http://http://

I had no idea
posted by nathancaswell at 3:34 PM on May 30, 2013 [2 favorites]


Embarrassingly, I never knew this either. Thanks for enlightening me, benito.strauss.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane (staff) at 3:48 PM on May 30, 2013 [3 favorites]


Oh, this is awesome. It's always bothered me just that little bit that Ctrl-U worked in comments but not in posts.
posted by jeather at 3:59 PM on May 30, 2013


Gnifti, you really should think about upgrading to the new CabalMod package.
posted by zarq at 4:14 PM on May 30, 2013


pb: "It might help to think of it as, "time to add a (Ctrl-U)RL.""

This is officially my favorite thing today.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 4:17 PM on May 30, 2013


^U in the unix shell erases the line.
posted by Obscure Reference at 4:45 PM on May 30, 2013


Little known easter egg: Pressing Alt-F4 turns the "Post Comment" button into a unicorn. Only on windows.
posted by double block and bleed at 5:52 PM on May 30, 2013


I'm a terrible person.
posted by double block and bleed at 5:55 PM on May 30, 2013


I'm a terrible person.

It's cool, I tried CTRL + U as soon as I saw the title of the post and all of a sudden saw mefi naked.
posted by postcommunism at 6:07 PM on May 30, 2013 [1 favorite]


MeFi wasn't wearing pants anyway.
posted by arcticseal at 7:19 PM on May 30, 2013


Man, I suggested this months ago and was denied. I see that benito.strauss must have paid his cabal dues. Sorry I fell behind, it won't happen again.
posted by desjardins at 8:18 PM on May 30, 2013 [2 favorites]


"Accused of being in the cabal"

BINGO!
posted by benito.strauss at 9:29 PM on May 30, 2013 [1 favorite]


Sorry about that desjardins. Your request wasn't denied. I put it on my to do list and then lost focus at some point. When I saw the request today it jogged my memory and I remembered I should have done it a while ago.
posted by pb (staff) at 9:33 PM on May 30, 2013


and the moral of the meta is.... nag pb. ;)
posted by zarq at 10:11 PM on May 30, 2013


CTRL+W will reveal "cabal" identifiers in a thread. It's an upside-down "M"
posted by lordaych at 2:11 AM on May 31, 2013


In Metafilter, links ctrl-U.
posted by chavenet at 6:05 AM on May 31, 2013 [4 favorites]


^U in the unix shell erases the line.

This is still what I use Ctrl-U for. It pissed me off to no end when Firefox broke that, especially when the focus is on the address box. After Opera followed suit I made sure to always use the "traditional layout".
posted by kmz at 6:59 AM on May 31, 2013


I saw problems at the mall last night, buying naughty things at Frederick's.

Ahooooo!
posted by flabdablet at 7:03 AM on May 31, 2013 [1 favorite]


I had no idea about this shortcut. Thanks!
posted by radioamy at 1:39 PM on May 31, 2013


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