Until recently, I ran Firefox on my Mac with the cache disabled because I found it annoying that my tweaks weren’t updated when refreshing a work in progress. My usual Control/Command+F5 wouldn’t work for me. Being used to Firefox on Windows, I’d often forget and find myself powering up VoiceOver.
To clarify, on a Mac, Control+F5 is not a hard refresh as it is on Windows. In the majority of cases, the Command key replaces the Control key when converting Windows shortcuts to Mac ones. For example, Control+T to open a new tab under Windows is Command+T on a Mac.
Logic dictates that a hard refresh should be Command+F5 on my Mac. Indeed, the Firefox documentation on keyboard shortcuts shows that Command+F5 should refresh overriding the cache, but that loads VoiceOver for me (OS X 10.4 or later).
The long and short of it
I now use Command+R for refresh and Command+Shift+R for when I need to do a hard refresh. As you’d expect, you can replace Command with Control for the Windows equivalent. And now I can turn my cache back on and save some time and bandwidth!
Of course, I could have set my own keyboard shortcuts! But then I’d have to set them up on all installations of Firefox I use.
Comment 1
Thank you,
I work on windows (bootcamp on an imac) during the day and my mac at home. I too keep accidentally initiating voice over. Thanks for the tip.
Chris, 31 August 2007 at 0441