# Issues with using keyboard shortcut to select post to edit
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/issues-with-using-keyboard-shortcut-to-select-post-to-edit/286579
**Category:** Support
**Tags:** keyboard-shortcuts
**Created:** [August 2, 2019, 5:39pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/issues-with-using-keyboard-shortcut-to-select-post-to-edit/286579 "2019-08-02T17:39:43Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ganncamp](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ganncamp)
#### Post date: [August 2, 2019, 5:39pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/issues-with-using-keyboard-shortcut-to-select-post-to-edit/286579/1 "2019-08-02T17:39:43Z")
> [@Add 'Edit Body' pencil at top of post](https://meta.discourse.org/t/add-edit-body-pencil-at-top-of-post/124733/2):
>
> For “Power Users”™, we have several keyboard shortcuts ⌨!
>
> You can browse posts using j and k and quickly open the edit composer on the selected post using e.
>
> Press ? to learn more!
Thanks for the pointer!
I happen to have a find-as-you-type extension installed that apparently blocks that functionality, so that doesn’t work for me, but it would have been nice.
As a sidenote, in Jira I get the find-as-you-type behavior _and_ the intended effect of keyboard shortcuts.
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### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [August 2, 2019, 6:28pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/issues-with-using-keyboard-shortcut-to-select-post-to-edit/286579/2 "2019-08-02T18:28:39Z")
> [@ganncamp](#):
>
> As a sidenote, in Jira I get the find-as-you-type behavior _and_ the intended effect of keyboard shortcuts.
Is the “find-as-yout-type” the standard Firefox one or is it a custom extension?
Are the Jira shortcuts key combos or simple keys like us?
Don’t you have a shortcut to switch “find-as-yout-type” on and off?
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### Author:  [@ganncamp](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ganncamp)
#### Post date: [August 2, 2019, 6:46pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/issues-with-using-keyboard-shortcut-to-select-post-to-edit/286579/3 "2019-08-02T18:46:20Z")
> [@Falco](#):
>
> Is the “find-as-yout-type” the standard Firefox one or is it a custom extension?
I’m in Chrome, Ubuntu. I got the extension years ago from the marketplace (and I love it). It’s called [Type-ahead-find](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/type-ahead-find/cpecbmjeidppdiampimghndkikcmoadk).
> [@Falco](#):
>
> Are the Jira shortcuts key combos or simple keys like us?
Simple keys. In a list of issues it’s j/k to go forward/back, e to edit, l (lower-case L) to edit labels, c to create, …
> [@Falco](#):
>
> Don’t you have a shortcut to switch “find-as-yout-type” on and off?
In looking at the docs (which I haven’t done in literally _years_) it seems that I can blacklist sites. So… I’ve blacklisted and reloaded the window and it still has no effect (with nothing in the console). I’ll try restarting the browser…
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### Author:  [@ganncamp](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ganncamp)
#### Post date: [August 2, 2019, 6:48pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/issues-with-using-keyboard-shortcut-to-select-post-to-edit/286579/4 "2019-08-02T18:48:20Z")
…aaaand still nothing.
🤷♀️
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### Author:  [@ganncamp](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ganncamp)
#### Post date: [August 2, 2019, 6:59pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/issues-with-using-keyboard-shortcut-to-select-post-to-edit/286579/5 "2019-08-02T18:59:49Z")
As a followup, it seems that f (bookmark) works, but e does not.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [August 2, 2019, 11:47pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/issues-with-using-keyboard-shortcut-to-select-post-to-edit/286579/6 "2019-08-02T23:47:37Z")
e is working for me in Chrome/Windows; did you have a post selected? I can’t think of any reason f bookmark would work when edit would not though.
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### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2019, 12:01am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/issues-with-using-keyboard-shortcut-to-select-post-to-edit/286579/7 "2019-08-03T00:01:16Z")
The custom browser extension captures the keyboard event and prevent it from popping to us.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [August 3, 2019, 12:03am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/issues-with-using-keyboard-shortcut-to-select-post-to-edit/286579/8 "2019-08-03T00:03:36Z")
> [@ganncamp](#):
>
> I happen to have a find-as-you-type extension installed that apparently blocks that functionality, so that doesn’t work for me, but it would have been nice.
Doesn’t this feature already exist in Chrome? Press ctrl+f and type to match. I am unclear why an extension would be needed?
(you may need to press this twice in long Discourse topics as we do capture that because on a long topic only the visible posts will be loaded.)
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### Author:  [@ganncamp](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ganncamp)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2019, 11:44am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/issues-with-using-keyboard-shortcut-to-select-post-to-edit/286579/9 "2019-08-05T11:44:46Z")
Hi,
To be clear, I’ve blacklisted the forum in the find-as-you-type extension, so it’s no longer blocking anything - if it ever was; as I said, the keyboard shortcuts work in Jira.
> [@codinghorror](#):
>
> e is working for me in Chrome/Windows; did you have a post selected?
Could you elaborate on post selection, please? Once I open a topic, it’s not clear to me how I “select” an individual post in it. I’ve tried clicking in the post, but that doesn’t seem to select it.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2019, 11:48am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/issues-with-using-keyboard-shortcut-to-select-post-to-edit/286579/10 "2019-08-05T11:48:27Z")
> [@Falco](#):
>
> You can browse posts using j and k and quickly open the edit composer on the selected post using e.
As per the above ↑
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### Author:  [@ganncamp](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ganncamp)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2019, 12:25pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/issues-with-using-keyboard-shortcut-to-select-post-to-edit/286579/11 "2019-08-05T12:25:35Z")
Wow! It seems the only way to “select” a post is to “browse” to it using `j`/`k`. If I click a post a dozen times it does nothing. It’s only when I use the keyboard that the red selection indicator is added to the interface! Since I wasn’t aware of the keyboard shortcuts it never occurred to me to use the keyboard in this interface. I’ve never seen the red selection indicator before just now.
May I suggest that this facet of the UX be reconsidered?
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [August 5, 2019, 8:24pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/issues-with-using-keyboard-shortcut-to-select-post-to-edit/286579/12 "2019-08-05T20:24:26Z")
I believe that sort of keyboard selection mechanism is fairly standard for advanced keyboard UIs on the web.
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### Author:  [@ganncamp](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ganncamp)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2019, 6:23pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/issues-with-using-keyboard-shortcut-to-select-post-to-edit/286579/13 "2019-08-19T18:23:25Z")
I’m coming back to this because the UI continues to surprise.
I’m scrolled to the bottom of the first/only post in a thread. I want to edit it. My hands are on the keyboard, so I hit ‘j’ to select it and the first post in the list of ‘other topics’ gets the red border instead. So… in some implicit yet unusable way, the thread post was _already_ selected?
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [August 19, 2019, 9:26pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/issues-with-using-keyboard-shortcut-to-select-post-to-edit/286579/14 "2019-08-19T21:26:33Z")
I can’t repro, or maybe it depends how far down you’ve scrolled? Try scrolling up or down a bit more, does the behavior change?
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### Author:  [@ganncamp](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ganncamp)
#### Post date: [August 20, 2019, 11:46am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/issues-with-using-keyboard-shortcut-to-select-post-to-edit/286579/15 "2019-08-20T11:46:29Z")
In this recording you see me scroll to the end of the post. The buttons below aren’t even in view. Then I hit ‘j’ on the keyboard. That’s when it jumps abruptly to select the first Suggested Topic
[https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/9/9/99148e80f58c7ad3f17579d7baba6aedbdd0bafa.mp4](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/9/9/99148e80f58c7ad3f17579d7baba6aedbdd0bafa.mp4)
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [August 20, 2019, 11:54pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/issues-with-using-keyboard-shortcut-to-select-post-to-edit/286579/16 "2019-08-20T23:54:46Z")
I see so the post in question is very long. Does this happen with a more typically sized post, like this one for example?
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### Author:  [@ganncamp](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ganncamp)
#### Post date: [August 21, 2019, 12:01pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/issues-with-using-keyboard-shortcut-to-select-post-to-edit/286579/17 "2019-08-21T12:01:05Z")
Actually, I was quite surprised by the way that one worked. For very short posts - where I can see the buttons and a good bit of the ‘Suggested’ list on first page load, ‘j’ selects the OP. Here’s a medium-length example:
[https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/4/1/418b58370e644f982ba60c6736a3429818891a25.mp4](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/3X/4/1/418b58370e644f982ba60c6736a3429818891a25.mp4)
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### Author:  [@ganncamp](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ganncamp)
#### Post date: [August 28, 2019, 3:05pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/issues-with-using-keyboard-shortcut-to-select-post-to-edit/286579/18 "2019-08-28T15:05:42Z")
As a followup, I believe this is triggered by any amount of scrolling.
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### Author:  [@ganncamp](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ganncamp)
#### Post date: [September 18, 2019, 1:41pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/issues-with-using-keyboard-shortcut-to-select-post-to-edit/286579/19 "2019-09-18T13:41:29Z")
The select-first-recommended behavior happens as soon as the title is scrolled off the screen, regardless of how many screenfuls (2.5 in the example I was just looking at) the post is.
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### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [November 25, 2023, 12:44pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/issues-with-using-keyboard-shortcut-to-select-post-to-edit/286579/20 "2023-11-25T12:44:04Z")
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