Hi SomeCallMeTim,

Have you looked into any of the amazing add-ons available for Firefox? Customizable Shortcuts would probably do what you are looking for.

You could also check out this thread from Mozillazine:

http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=72994

Hopefully this helps!

Someone else asked about this recently and I wasn't able to come up with a good answer in that thread: How do I move curser to end of line on Mac (cmd+arrow key doesn't work) | Firefox Support Forum | Firefox Help.

Does making a change at the system level help? This article is from 2007, so I don't know whether it applies to your version of MacOS: Mac Switchers Tip: Remap the Home and End keys.

Edit: This post says that last trick doesn't work in Firefox: PC-like key bindings on a Mac.

I went groping around in the Firefox source code and here is the difference:

Windows (\content\xbl\builtin\win\platformHTMLBindings.xml):

     <handler event="keypress" keycode="VK_HOME" command="cmd_beginLine"/>
    <handler event="keypress" keycode="VK_END" command="cmd_endLine"/>
    <handler event="keypress" keycode="VK_HOME" modifiers="shift" command="cmd_selectBeginLine"/>
    <handler event="keypress" keycode="VK_END" modifiers="shift" command="cmd_selectEndLine"/>

MacOS (\content\xbl\builtin\mac\platformHTMLBindings.xml):

    <handler event="keypress" keycode="VK_LEFT"  modifiers="accel" command="cmd_beginLine"/>
    <handler event="keypress" keycode="VK_RIGHT" modifiers="accel" command="cmd_endLine"/>
    <handler event="keypress" keycode="VK_LEFT"  modifiers="accel,shift" command="cmd_selectBeginLine"/>
    <handler event="keypress" keycode="VK_RIGHT" modifiers="accel,shift" command="cmd_selectEndLine"/>
    <handler event="keypress" key="a" modifiers="control" command="cmd_beginLine"/>
    <handler event="keypress" key="e" modifiers="control" command="cmd_endLine"/>

Let's set aside the possibility of recompiling Firefox. Who has time for that? Instead... does Cmd+Left or Ctrl+A actually work? If so, perhaps we could overlay an event handler that recognizes the home key and converts it to Cmd+Left or Ctrl+A (i.e., dispatches a new keyboard event synthesized in code and cancels the default behavior of the Home key, if any).

@jscher2000 Thanks for the info. I actually found a link after some more digging that involved just unpacking and repacking the Firefox code. The article is, unfortunately, outdated, but a little sleuthing turned up a file in the Firefox package at this location:

Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/omni.ja

It's also a zip-style file, and can be extracted -- so I did. And lo and behold, inside that file I found the .xml file that you found, and that the above linked article referenced, at this path:

chrome/toolkit/content/global/platformHTMLBindings.xml

I swapped in the one referenced in the article for the one in Firefox, backed up the previous omni.ja file, re-zipped the new omni.ja, and then re-ran Firefox. Bingo.

Thanks for digging around for me. Sorry I didn't get around to following up on this with my result until now; it's been a crazy day.

A real fix for this should be a setting at the app level to enable standard home/end behavior. It's not like it would be hard to have a few extra settings that could optionally override the defaults. At a minimum an add-on to do this would be good, but none of the ones I could find did the job.

Hope this helps someone else who's looking for this answer.

A real fix for this should be a setting at the app level to enable standard home/end behavior.

It's very Windows-centric of us to think that way. ;-)

A UI for keyboard configuration has always been a wish list item in Firefox. Maybe it will finally be implemented some day if a developer takes an interest.

It's very Windows-centric of us to think that way

I would actually consider full keyboard reprogramming to be more Windows-like. The hallmark of Mac UI design is to not add all that complexity (though I know at least some apps include the ability to remap shortcuts to features). It's not like it's easy to tweak the Mac to use those keys correctly either; oddly enough it's something that's easier to do in Windows or Linux than on the Mac.

The Mac was never designed to be keyboard-driven; that was bolted on after the fact, and it shows. Did you know the first Macs shipped with no arrow keys at all? Much less home/end/page-up/page-down. You had to use the mouse for any navigation through a document. There is still no way to navigate menus from the keyboard on the Mac. And if a Mac app ends up off-screen by mistake, because you've disconnected your external monitor? Good luck getting it back using the keyboard. On Windows it's a few key-presses and a drag of the mouse, and it's back.

But I'm doing iOS development, so I need to work on a Mac from time to time, so what can I do? Most of my work on Windows and/or Linux, with only the occasional Mac adventure. At least I can try.

Thanks again. :)