Is there a way to disable the hotkeys?

Question

I navigate with Ctrl+n,p,f,b (readline/Emacs keys), so that I don't have to move my hands too much and get RSI again. Is there a way to disable Ctrl+b being hotkey for bold?

Note that this is not just an Emacs thing. Standard web browsers, like Firefox and Chrome, use things like Ctrl + K and Ctrl + L to navigate to the Google search bar and address bar respectively.

Answer 1

No.

The correct answer to the above yes/no question is "no".

I do appreciate the other answers suggested here. They offer creative workarounds, and I appreciate the thought people put into coming up with them.

But hacking your browser via "user scripts" or "bookmarklets" isn't really what's being asked for here. Even most developers -- let alone ordinary Stack Exchange users -- are not aware of such options, much less how to install and use them (and evaluate their security risk, etc.). Furthermore, such solutions will likely be brittle (not future-proof).

Think about it this way: If a user had asked "How do I change this shortcut?" and one of the responses was "Here's a Linux kernel patch I wrote for you," would you accept that as an answer? I'd upvote it (thanks for the effort!), but I wouldn't accept it.

A proper solution to the OP's problem would be a built-in SE preference to disable these frustrating hotkey settings permanently. Until that solution exists, the answer to this question is "no".

Answer 2

Bookmarklet:

javascript:(function(a,p){function i(e){e.stopPropagation()};p[a]('keydown',i,!0);p[a]('keypress',i,!0);p[a]('keyup',i,!0);})('addEventListener',$('#wmd-input').parent()[0]);

User Script:

// ==UserScript==
// @name           Cya WMD shortcuts
// @namespace      Rob W
// @version        1.0
// @match          https://stackoverflow.com/*
// @match          https://*.stackoverflow.com/*
// @match          https://superuser.com/*
// @match          https://meta.superuser.com/*
// @match          https://serverfault.com/*
// @match          https://meta.serverfault.com/*
// @match          https://askubuntu.com/*
// @match          https://meta.askubuntu.com/*
// @match          https://*.stackexchange.com/*
// @match          https://stackapps.com/*
// @run-at         document-end
// @grant          none
// ==/UserScript==

(typeof unsafeWindow !== 'undefined' ? unsafeWindow : window).$(function() {
    var p = document.getElementById('wmd-input');
    if (!p) return;
    p = p.parentNode;
    function ignore(e){e.stopPropagation();}    
    p.addEventListener('keydown', ignore, true);
    p.addEventListener('keypress', ignore, true);
    p.addEventListener('keyup', ignore, true);
});

Technical details

• In the W3C event model, JavaScript events are fired in two ways:
• Capture (The events are fired, from the top of the document to the target)
• Bubble (The events bubble from the target to the top of the document).
• In wmd.js, the events are bound using addEventListener, in the bubbling phase.
• The event is added to the parent node of the element, with the capturing flag. Inside the event listener, event.stopPropagation(); is called, to stop the event from propagating further.
• As a result, all WMD shortcuts are disabled.

Chrome extension

1. Create a directory, and store the following two files in it.
2. Visit chrome://extensions/
3. Enable Developer mode
4. Click on the button Load unpacked extension....
5. Select the directory from step 1.

manifest.json

{
    "name": "Cya WMD shortcuts",
    "manifest_version": 2,
    "version": "1.0",
    "content_scripts": [{
        "js": ["contentscript.js"],
        "matches": [
            "https://stackoverflow.com/*",
            "https://*.stackoverflow.com/*",
            "https://superuser.com/*",
            "https://meta.superuser.com/*",
            "https://serverfault.com/*",
            "https://meta.serverfault.com/*",
            "https://askubuntu.com/*",
            "https://meta.askubuntu.com/*",
            "https://*.stackexchange.com/*",
            "https://stackapps.com/*"
        ]
    }]
}

contentscript.js

var p = document.getElementById('wmd-input');
if (p) {
    p = p.parentNode;
    var ignore = function(e){e.stopPropagation();};
    p.addEventListener('keydown', ignore, true);
    p.addEventListener('keypress', ignore, true);
    p.addEventListener('keyup', ignore, true);
}

 

Answer 3

I feel for you, as I have a similar problem... if not worse :-(

On contemporary Hungarian keyboards, some special characters are mapped to key combinations involving the Right Alt (aka AltGr) key. Such as

• [ to RightAlt+F,
• ] to RightAlt+G ...which opens the "Insert Image" dialog on SO,
• { to RightAlt+B ...which evokes strong text on SO,
• } to RightAlt+N.

Do I need to explain how terrible it is to try to write e.g. Java code with this keyboard mapping? Lately I realized that the Search box doesn't have these mappings - so if I need a closing square bracket or an opening curly bracket (and there is no code snippet around in the actual post to copy from), all I need is to switch to the Search box, type the character, select it, Ctrl+X, back to the Editor box, Ctrl+V...

Even though this is not an answer to your question in the strict sense, at least (hopefully) it shows that this problem is not as marginal as it may seem at first sight.

Answer 4

I made an open source Chrome extension for this

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/no-stackexchange-editor-k/nhdklhaffdlobbdgheaehofbnfebeddm?hl=en-US

Answer 5

Here is Rob W's script, updated to only block cntrl-* and fixed so that it works with NinjaKit which is a Safari extension for running user scripts. Re-did it for this question on Ask Different

NinjaKit: https://github.com/os0x/NinjaKit

Script:

// ==UserScript==
// @name           Cya WMD shortcuts
// @namespace      Rob W
// @version        1.0
// @include          https://apple.stackexchange.com/*
// @include          http://stackoverflow.com/*
// @include          http://superuser.com/*
// @include          http://meta.superuser.com/*
// @include          http://serverfault.com/*
// @include          http://meta.serverfault.com/*
// @include          http://askubuntu.com/*
// @include          http://meta.askubuntu.com/*
// @include          http://*.stackexchange.com/*
// @include          http://answers.onstartups.com/*
// @include          http://meta.answers.onstartups.com/*
// @include          http://stackapps.com/*
// @run-at         document-end
// @grant          none
// ==/UserScript==
(function () {
    var p = document.getElementById('wmd-input');
    console.log("wmd-input:" + p);
    if (p) {
        p = p.parentNode;

        function ignore(e) {
            if (e.ctrlKey) {
                e.stopPropagation();
            }
        }
        p.addEventListener('keydown', ignore, true);
        p.addEventListener('keypress', ignore, true);
        p.addEventListener('keyup', ignore, true);
    }
})();

Answer 6

With Firefox 27 the already posted Greasemonkey scripts and bookmarklet don't work.

The bookmarklet used to work, but it doesn't anymore.

What does work is using anti-keygrabber.user.js (blog entry). In case it does not contain all keycodes you want to be excluded from being grabbed by a webpage you can easily add them.

For example to also exclude Ctrl+I you just have to add:

case 73:

to the first switch statement:

switch (e.keyCode) {
  case 87: // W - close window
  case 84: // T - open tab
  case 76: // L - focus awesome bar
  case 74: // J - open downloads panel
    e.stopImmediatePropagation();
    return;
}

Answer 7

Here’s an updated script.

// ==UserScript==
// @name     Stack Exchange: Kill stupid shortcuts
// @version  1
// @grant    none
// @run-at   document-start
// @match    https://*.stackexchange.com/*
// @match    https://*.superuser.com/*
// @match    https://*.stackoverflow.com/*
// @match    https://*.mathoverflow.net/*
// @match    https://*.serverfault.com/*
// @match    https://*.askubuntu.com/*
// @match    https://stackapps.com/*
// @exclude  https://chat.stackexchange.com/*
// @exclude  https://api.stackexchange.com/*
// @exclude  https://data.stackexchange.com/*
// @exclude  https://openid.stackexchange.com/*
// @exclude  https://area51.stackexchange.com/*
// @exclude  https://stackexchange.com/*
// @exclude  https://contests.stackoverflow.com/*
// @exclude  /^https?:\/\/winterbash\d{4,}\.stackexchange\.com\//
// ==/UserScript==

const ignore = ev => {
  if (!ev.target.matches('.wmd-input'))
    return;
  if (ev.ctrlKey || ev.metaKey || ev.altKey)
    ev.stopPropagation();
};

document.addEventListener('keydown', ignore, true);
document.addEventListener('keypress', ignore, true);
document.addEventListener('keyup', ignore, true);

Improvements relative to Rob W’s version:

• The event handler is attached to the document in the capturing phase, not to the textarea node itself. This allows the script to run even before the page has finished loading (@run-at document-start), thus ensuring there is no gap when the editor is usable with shortcuts not disabled yet.
• The editor element is recognised by the wmd-input CSS class, not by element ID. This allows the script to work with the dynamically-inserted quick editor as well, not just on the stand-alone edit page (/posts/<...>/edit).
• Key presses without modifier keys are passed through. This is necessary because key presses are monitored for the purposes of bot detection and blocking unadorned key presses may trigger CAPTCHA prompts.

Answer 8

Most likely there is; check in your browser's settings (or at least tell us what browser you are using).

If there isn't you can easily create (or have someone create here on meta) a greasemonkey script to remove the accesskey="" attributes from HTML tags. Again, not all browsers support greasemonkey (Firefox and Chrome do, possibly others do too).

If you are asking for some kind of user setting in your account page then I'm fairly sure it's not going to happen, sorry. Very very few people "navigate" web pages using emacs keys (in fact I find this kinda funny :P) and when it comes to user interfaces less is always better: you don't want to offer 5 thousand options to your user when the average user cares about 1 or 2.