There is no more useless keyboard shortcut than F12.
Users don’t want to browse the source code of web pages. Certainly not with the efficiency of a single keystroke.
This serves to only lag and bug out the browser when you accidentally hit that key and then overwrite an entire page’s source code, wiping away the E-Mail you’ve been working on for the past 20 minutes.
Whos idea is it to make this shortcut unmodifiable?
What does F12 do on your browser. Mine brings up the dev console which while maybe annoying, doesn’t seem like it should erase anything you’re working on unless you did it on purpose through deleting things in the Elements tab, but then that’s your fault. I do agree however that F12 is pointless as Ctrl + Shift + I on any page will bring up the inspector (dev console) anyway.
It sounds to me like you’re complaining about F12 bringing up the source code of the page as that’s the only way I could see it “overwrite an entire page’s source code, wiping away the E-Mail you’ve been working on for the past 20 minutes”. But even then, the source code is usually opened in a new tab and not the one you were working in so I don’t see how it’d overwrite anything. Although yet again if this is what F12 does for you, I agree that it shouldn’t as there’s already a keybind for viewing source: Ctrl + U.
If you could describe more clearly what’s happening to you and what website you’re on when it happens that’d be awesome. Screenshots could help as well to clear up the confusion.
Accidentally hitting the F12 key is indeed, my fault, but that doesn’t excuse poor design.
But you’re describing the problem perfectly. Be writing rapidly, accidentally hit the F12 key, and this console pops up specifically with the elements section activated and highlighted so when you press another key, all the highlighted elements are wiped, ruining the browser window, losing your work, wasting your time.
Hmm I actually don’t think hitting F12 is your fault, and completely agree it’s not the best design (I don’t know if I’d go as far as to say poor design, since F5 could cause far more havoc than F12 and is far easier to accidentally hit than F12).
What I thought was your fault was the fact that to delete an element from the Elements tab you need to be clicked on it and hit either “Delete” or “Backspace”. But I guess if you’re typing something fast and didn’t notice the Elements menu open you could hit backspace to delete text which would actually delete an element since as you said, it auto selects the body tag (which is kinda silly overall but unrelated).
I support removing F12 as we already have Ctrl + Shift + I to do the same functionality, hopefully someone on the team checks this post out. Although if you run into this issue in the future, you can usually Ctrl + Z to undo the deletion and get all your lost work back (as long as you didn’t close the Elements menu).
I tested it while writing this post and the text box wasn’t empty after my Ctrl + Z. It probably depends heavily on how the site you’re on handles it’s forms though, as I imagine a JS based form will fare better than something that works with pure HTML since that’s what’s being deleted and undeleted.
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