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Comment by gambiter | Hacker News Reader

It's ahem dangerous?

When was the last time ANYONE truly used Ctrl-S to save the webpage as HTML? And why would my inability to do it with a keyboard shortcut be a dangerous problem?

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Would you be so dismissive if the overridden key were Ctrl-W?

I wouldn't -- the number of times I've inadvertently hit C-w rather than C-s (or M-w when I wanted something else), or control-q when I meant to hit control-a, FAR outnumber (by two orders of magnitude) the number of times I've wanted to close windows or exit my application in that manner.

Perhaps it's my windows upbringing, rather than mac, but Ctrl-F4 / alt-F4 are my preferred window/app closers, and I wish dearly I could unmap the other shortcuts sometimes.

What's the relevance of that question? There's no reason it has to be all or nothing. I would harshly criticize any site that overrode ctrl-W but I couldn't care less if they override ctrl-S.

The problem is that the decision is left up to the website.

But I see I'm in the minority here, thinking software should be predictable and leave the user a sense of control, so feel free to disregard my opinion.

I'd be all for browsers blocking the ability of web sites to intercept or repurpose ctrl-W, personally. But I think repurposing ctrl-S is often a good idea.

One might have thought the OP highlighted the inherent problems in making assumptions about the meaning of meta-keys for all of your users, all around the world.

But of course the OP continued to make the same mistake, which I pointed out way up at the beginning of this branch.

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