⌘Q is too damn close to ⌘W

http://squishtech.posterous.com/q-is-too-damn-close-to-w

by sprsquish • 16 years ago

226 106 16 years ago

squishtech.posterous.com

jolan2• 16 years ago

In Chrome, I just use Ctrl+Shift+T when this happens.

sprsquish2• 16 years ago

Maybe it's a version thing, but Ctrl+Shift+T doesn't work for me. Cmd+Shift+T does. But will it restore all the tabs you had open when you accidentally quit?

jolan2• 16 years ago

Oops, yeah it's Ctrl on non-Mac and Cmd on Mac. It does restore the tabs.

martingordon• 16 years ago

I've had this happen to me in Chrome a few times recently (I switched to Chrome full time a few weeks ago), but I've never had it happen in Safari since Safari prompts you if you have multiple tabs/windows open.

glhaynes2• 16 years ago

Safari didn't prompt for the first major version or two — and didn't have 'reopen all windows from last session', either. Suuuuck.

kamechan2• 16 years ago

no keymap is without its annoyances. in DVORAK, ⌘w is right next to ⌘v (paste). i close windows all the time :(

nanotone• 16 years ago

On the other hand, in Dvorak, Q is directly above the left ⌘ key (where X usually is), and W is directly above the right ⌘ key (where , usually is). I'm always reminded of this serendipitous symmetry whenever people complain about ⌘Q and ⌘W being adjacent on QWERTY.

kamechan2• 16 years ago

absolutely. this is a wonderful thing...i may close a lot of windows, but i don't usually quit the entire program unless i mean to.

jemfinch3• 16 years ago

Do people really not know that Chrome has an option to reopen itself with the tabs you had open last? Preferences > Basics > On Startup > Reopen the pages that were open last.

alunny• 16 years ago

Well yes, but if you have 20+ tabs open in a couple of windows, it's disruptive and time consuming to close and reopen all of them.

Janteh• 16 years ago

Chrome actually reopens all tabs for you if you use the command after restarting chrome. I don't like the author's solution because I use cmd 1-9 for navigating between tabs.

glhaynes2• 16 years ago

And I'm sometimes a little annoyed at all the things to which I've been saying for the last week "I'll get back to that" suddenly showing up in my company's proxy logs all at once.

BrianHV• 16 years ago

I forget where I saw this tip, but after making this mistake several times I remapped command-Q in Chrome to the "Zoom" command. (Keyboard control panel -> Keyboard Shortcuts -> Application Shortcuts). It's already saved me lots of time. And of course, any harmless menu command will work in place of "Zoom."

Edit: after I RTFA, I see this is much like what the article suggested. The only real difference is that my approach prevents you from quitting from the keyboard at all.

natmaster• 16 years ago

Firefox + BarTab FTW.

xhuang• 16 years ago

why not use sessioin buddy[0] plugin, which save your tabs, so you don't have to open 20+ all at once

[0] https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/edacconmaakjimmf...

eli• 16 years ago

I think the Ctrl+Shift+T shortcut to reopen closed tabs works across sessions too.

andreyf2• 16 years ago

This.

cstuder• 16 years ago

That's the one feature that's definitly missing from Safari. (Safari only just now learned to re-open the last tab with Command-Z. All the other tabs you'll have to search for yourself in the recently closed pages-menu.)

erikano3• 16 years ago

This did not work for me using Chromium 5.0.375.127 (0) under FreeBSD 8.1.

wmoxam• 16 years ago

Many sites use session cookies, which expire on exit.

miguelrios• 16 years ago

That doesn't change the fact that I get mad and lose time whenever I accidentally close all my tabs.

noahth• 16 years ago

And if you use the Recently Closed Tabs feature on the New Tab page, you can reopen sets of tabs that were all closed at once.

sohooo2• 16 years ago

The sweet Sessions extension for Safari solves some of those problems.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8247646/sessions/index.html

sh1mmer• 16 years ago

This is also a list of the "recently closed" tabs in the history menu if you cmd+w instead of cmd+q.

cookiecaper2• 16 years ago

If you have something typed up, it may not always come back. For instance, Facebook uses javascript-y input boxes, so if you accidentally back away or close the window, the browser will not restore your content. Also, a Flash game will not save your state, etc.

jamesbritt• 16 years ago

Yes, but it might not restore the state of the Web page at the time it was closed.

slig• 16 years ago

Latest chrome (9.x dev) has an option in "about:flags" to show you a kind of confirmation box before quitting.

sp4rki• 16 years ago

This has been the best tip I've ever gotten. Thank you kind sir for having changed my life so drastically in just a second!

mcritz• 16 years ago

This is like complaining that he keeps getting a spoonful of Cheerios up his nose every morning because his nostrils are too close to his mouth.

sprsquish2• 16 years ago

Happens all the time! I'm getting my nose moved though.

blahedo• 16 years ago

...and then posting a nice hack to relocate the nostrils to the top of the head during Cheerios-eating time and sidestep the spoon-nostril problem entirely. So it's not so bad.

scott_s• 16 years ago

In vi, I use control+w to shift between the sections of a split window. You can imagine the hilarity that used to ensue. But, it's not an issue anymore. I haven't made that mistake in well over a year.

BCM43• 16 years ago

Similarly, in emacs I use ctrl+n to go down. On FF, this will open 5-20 windows, depending on how long I wait. (I have a very fast repeat.) Pentadacty with emacs bindings has helped with, but occasionally I will hit the key to pass all keys to FF, and once again end up with ~20 windows to close.

leif• 16 years ago

Me too, ugh. I also can't tell you how many times I've hit M-d thinking I'd delete a word and then keep typing, and end up writing all over the address bar instead.

sohooo2• 16 years ago

Switchers to OS X with a german keyboard layout also experience quite a lot of fun. That's because on Windows, you have to type ALT+Q to get the @ in an email adress.

You have to fight your muscle memory not to type CMD+Q in OS X.

FluidDjango• 16 years ago

That's why for applications that I do not want to quit easily I set "Application (keyboard) Shortcuts" [ OS X ] to require something less commonly used (like cntl-opt-cmd-Q) for quitting. [ OS X System Preferences -> Keyboard ]

katovatzschyn• 16 years ago

"The Opposite of Fitts' Law - The Ejector Seat Analogy"

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/03/the-opposite-of-fit...

jrockway3• 16 years ago

C-x C-c is too close to C-x C-b.

eru2• 16 years ago

Stop using qwerty.

jrockway3• 16 years ago

But then C-q C-j is too close to C-q C-x.

CoreDumpling• 16 years ago

C-x anything is too close to C-z, though that is more of an annoyance than harm.

pjscott• 16 years ago

Quitting emacs should be a fairly rare task; just remap C-x C-c to something harder to hit by accident in your .emacs file.

(I would do this myself, but I keep putting it off.)

jrockway3• 16 years ago

Oh, I do. Same with C-z as mentioned below. When I'm in a terminal-based session, I keep C-x C-c and C-z around. When I'm in my main X-based session, C-z is zap-to-char and C-x C-c is bury-buffer.

shawnwall• 16 years ago

you just changed one of the consistent features of all os x applications, how to close applications and close windows/tabs of applications.

for some reason i always use the finger motion/press of thumb on left ⌘-key + index finger on q key to quit things and i've never experienced the ⌘q ⌘w issue.

jerf• 16 years ago

I think squishtech's first clue that they changed one of the consistent features of all OSX applications was when they went to the control panel and changed the feature.

I think it'll be OK.

dmaz• 16 years ago

Chrome for Linux addresses this by using Ctrl+Shift+Q.

duopixel• 16 years ago

I'm willing to bet the author is either A) not a touch typist or B) Comes from Windows/Linux. It's not the author's fault, of course, but it has been around since 1984 and it's unlikely to change. The 'native' way to type commands on a Mac is using your thumb to press Command and your pinky to press Q, or your ring finger to press W.

It feels awfully weird pressing Q with your ring finger.

Window/Linux users use the pinky to press ctrl, taking your hand out of the usual touch typing position, and thus making it more prone to mistakes.

dedward2• 16 years ago

I agree with your premise but not your conclusion. I'm a touch-typist - but many touch typists in the computer age end up not always using classical touch typing methods - after all,the traditional typewriter keyboard didn't have an alt or cmd or ctrl key, right?

I use the thumb on left-cmd and a ring finger on either q or w (never thought about it... maybe I use the pinky sometimes) - and I don't recall ever making a mistake, although I suspect that may partially be because I primarily use safari, and it warns me if I try to close multiple tabs or a single tab/window with form data filled out.

And everyone should hopefully be mapping capslock to ctrl.... that just saves all kinds of hassle down the road.

tedge• 16 years ago

With a bit of practice, you can train your hand to do ⌘-W as a 3-finger "chord" by touching your middle finger to the 'Q' key before allowing your index finger to depress the 'W'.

d0m• 16 years ago

In theory maybe but in practice I've never typed cmd+q instead of cmd+w. (A little bit like I've never typed ctrl+a (which select all) instead of ctrl+s (which save)).

However, I've pressed f1 instead of escape a couple of time so I make sure to bind f1 to escape in vim

drivebyacct2• 16 years ago

I will give plenty of karma to anyone who can tell me an easy way of doing something even remotely similar in Linux. I'd love it.

lukeschlather• 16 years ago

On Ubuntu the first thing I do with a new install is rebind quit to Command W. (System -> preferences -> keyboard shortcuts.)

If you're using Firefox you just make sure browser.warnOnQuit is set to True (out of the box, it's set to true.)

As far as Chromium goes, near as I can tell ctrl-Q does not work at all, which is something Firefox would do well to imitate.

ins0mniac• 16 years ago

Chromium uses Shift+Ctrl+Q to exit.

dedward2• 16 years ago

Most browsers warn you if you are about to close multiple tabs.... I guess chrome doesn't? Weird.

That would be an implementation problem for chrome - every other OSX application tends to properly warn you if you are about to close multiple context windows with cmd-q.

EDIT: Just researching a bit- this seems to be a conflict between the Chromium design goals and the OSX UI guidelines... the Chrome team absolutely refuses to add a warning dialog if you try to close multiple tabs, but it would be the expected behaviour on OSX.

I tend to fall on the side of OSX - part of what makes it great is UI consistency - and this is one case where Chromium is making things worse, not better.

abraham2• 16 years ago

The latest developer version of Chrome (9.x) has an experimental warning dialog in "about:flags".

_delirium• 16 years ago

Interesting that they gave in and added it, since they've been WONTFIXing requests to make it even a non-default option for over two years: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=147

shrikant2• 16 years ago

Where? I have 9.0.570.1 on Windows 7 (32-bit) and I don't see such an option in the about:flags.

The only flag relating to tabs I can see is the first one to put the tabs down the side.

erikano3• 16 years ago

I think that the best approach would be do have a warning as default, except from in "Incognito" mode - that way, people who feel a need to quickly close the browser can use Incognito mode or disable the warning and the rest of us avoid troublesome accidental closing of the browser.

megrimlock• 16 years ago

What's really needed here is not more distance between hotkeys, but instead universal lightweight undo for user interactions.

The most precious resource is the user's time. There should be no interaction that irreversibly discards the user's work. We have fairly universal undo for editing operations; there should be just as much undo support for closing windows, tabs, or apps -- carefully constructed artifacts of the user's workflow.

andreyf2• 16 years ago

Tabs: ⇧⌘T

Apps: double tap

Windows: Good idea! If only there was an OS that treated those as vital UI components...

kuroir• 16 years ago

It is indeed to close, but it's not worth it modify it since it's a system wide standard.

arohner• 16 years ago

My real problem is that M-w is too close to ⌘-w, especially when I have meta mapped to ⌘ on my external keyboard.

I would really love to have a consistent set of shortcuts across emacs and everything else I use.

thought_alarm• 16 years ago

The reason it's not normally a problem is that if you're working on a document and you hit ⌘Q (or ⌘W for that matter) you will be prompted to save your changes.

However, this does become a problem in web browsers and file browsers where there are no changes to save.

Apparently in the early days of OS X the NEXTSTEP guys wanted to add a ⌘Q shortcut to Finder, which would log you out of OS X. As the story goes, some people at Apple really hated that idea, so after some lively debate they settled on ⌘⇧Q instead. (As a bonus, it's now a global shortcut, so you don't have to be in Finder to use it.)

Similar problem with web browsers. You can give it a different shortcut, or you can enable a prompt to warn when closing multiple tabs. Most people opt for the latter.

parenthesis3• 16 years ago

In earlier versions of OS X (<= 10.3 (?)), ⌘Q when in the Finder quits it, just like any other application, which was a little disconcerting the first time you did it (by mistake).

philwelch2• 16 years ago

This wasn't the case at all, at least not on stock OS X (who knows what you could enable with haxies). You could certainly force quit the Finder, but it just relaunched immediately.

bconway• 16 years ago

I had this issue for a while, and got around it by requiring Firefox to prompt me if I'm closing more than one tab at a time. It's ugly, but it works.

metageek• 16 years ago

In System 7, I think it was, it was possible to use ResEdit on the Finder to add a ⌘Q. Useful if you were low on memory. IIRC, if the last application exited, the Finder would restart.

hexley2• 16 years ago

I could have sworn somebody made a SIMBL plugin years ago to provide confirmation for Cmd-Q in all apps...or am I just going crazy?

hippich• 16 years ago

Can you close tab with Ctrl-W in Mac (like in Ubuntu and Win)? If so - just use it. Ctrl-Q do not quit browser =)

zaius• 16 years ago

I use this to map it to ⌘⇧Q

defaults write com.google.Chrome NSUserKeyEquivalents '{"Quit Google Chrome"="@$Q";}'

jlees• 16 years ago

Good thing we're fixing this!

Argorak• 16 years ago

Huh? I never had that problem and do actually like it that way. Train yourself to use the middle finger for "W" and the ring finger for pressing "Q" and the problem vanishes. It will still happen to you perhaps once per month, but I can live with that.

thisisblurry2• 16 years ago

This is how I do it and exactly as you say, I rarely end up doing the unintended action.

limmeau• 16 years ago

On German Windows keyboards, @ is on right-Alt-Q. Recently, I had a (Windows-trained) guest who wanted to write an email on my Mac, but Firefox kept "crashing".

ewjordan• 16 years ago

Huh. I guess that's true, for some reason I've never noticed it before.

I usually keep my left hand on my "home keys" when browsing (Firefox user here), in order from pinky to thumb, q-w-e-f-⌘, of which I use w, f, and ⌘ on a regular basis, and I guess that usually keeps me from mis-hitting q when I mean w, I'd actually have to push the wrong finger, which is pretty rare.

Right thumb goes on the trackpad for mouse interactions (much easier now that the MBP trackpad presses in rather than having a button), other four fingers on that hand go on j-k-l-; (⌘+j/k/l I use all the time for downloads/search/address bar, ; is wasted, of course). Scrolling is the only thing that sucks, but you can get pretty far with space/shift+space (hit space with left thumb, shift with right pinky).

If I had a problem with this, I'd probably go with the WoW shortcut for quitting, alt+command+Q, which is pretty hard to do accidentally (Double-thumb keypress? Expert move...) and doesn't tend to be bound to anything else. Command+1 seems like a bad idea because some of us are very used to Command+(number) to switch to tabs.

wdr1• 16 years ago

This doesn't seem to work for me using Firefox on Snow Leopard. The menu changes to the crazy keyboard shortcut I give to Quit (and sure enough the crazy combo works as well), however Cmd-Q still quits Firefox as well.

hexley2• 16 years ago

That's because Mac Firefox is a dirty, filthy no-good hack.

foenix• 16 years ago

I just did this to a blog entry after reading your post. I should have written in out in vim like I normally do.

ankushnarula• 16 years ago

FWIW... This is a useful resource when trying to remap shortcuts in Safari. I used it to remap Cmd-L to "Google Search..." to better mimic Chrome.

file:///Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources/Shortcuts.html

edge172• 16 years ago

I think the worst design decision was putting the print button next to the save button. I've definitely sent code files in excess of 50k lines to some unknown printer before by accident.

bruceboughton• 16 years ago

That's poetic justice for having code files in excess of 50k lines.

edge172• 16 years ago

Haha tell me about it. I've seen functions in excess of 30k lines.

invertedlambda2• 16 years ago

Yes, yes and yes.

stretchwithme• 16 years ago

very true.

gmatty• 16 years ago

A F#$#@$* men

mhd• 16 years ago

German hackers represent: On a German keyboard on Windows or Linux, you have to enter a few characters with the right Alt key (the "AltGr" key). This includes the "@" sign, which is located on the "Q" key. A lot of first-time switchers thus cause their browser to close every time they try to enter an email address.

Incidentally, the "@" sign, as many other characters, is on a different key on the German Mac layout. Never understood why e.g. the US layout stays the same on every system, but the German one doesn't. Good time that I switched to the US one long ago. Now I only have to fight with different ways to access umlauts…

linhat• 16 years ago

well, this is not really a solution to his problem, but instead intended as an informational bit. i am actually using a dvorak(-programmers) layout. then the Q and W keys are quite far apart, with the Q key right above the left ⌘ key, and W right above the right ⌘ key, a really handy addition to an (already) awesome layout.

meelash• 16 years ago

I've never had this happen to me if I recall. Do the people who have a problem with this not keep their hand in "typing position"? It seems really difficult to me, with my left hand in position (which can be assured with the F dot) to hit W with my pinky or Q with my ring finger.

erikano3• 16 years ago

I'm using Firefox and Vimperator [1] with a TypeMatrix EZ-Reach 2030 [2] mapped to US-Dvorak under FreeBSD 8.1 with xmonad [3] + xmobar [4].

This means that:

- When my fingers are resting on the home row, they are on keys a, o, e, u and h, t, n, s.

- When I want to close a tab in Firefox, I press d, which is left of h.

- When I want to quit Firefox completely, I press :q.

I can't remember the last time I closed a tab I didn't want to close or exited Firefox without meaning to do so. The only problem I had for a while, was that I started "record macro" with q when I meant to scroll with j - that hasn't happened for quite some time now.

I mostly only use Chromium if I am logged in on various sites in Firefox and I need to use my server as proxy to access a web service bound to 127.0.0.1 on the server (meaning that it is not publicly accessible), while also using the sites I am logged in on in Firefox. I always quit Chromium by closing all tabs, and as mentioned by others, Ctrl+w is far away from Ctrl+q.

[1] http://vimperator.org/vimperator

[2] http://typematrix.com/ezr2030/

[3] http://xmonad.org/

[4] http://hackage.haskell.org/package/xmobar

cookiecaper2• 16 years ago

This has bitten me several times and it really sucks. The "Restore Tab" function doesn't restore the state of Flash applications and it doesn't restore content in some input boxes (like those on Facebook, because they are hidden by JS initially).

If you're in Private Browsing mode and this happens, you lose the whole session forever, and that just happened to me the other day. It was really frustrating. :(

onk• 16 years ago

o is too close to 0.

⌘Q is too damn close to ⌘W

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