Do you know how this was changed?

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/keybinder Keybinder Customize, override or disable almost any shortcut. Based on the (discontinued) Customizable Shortcuts add-on by Tim Taubert.

Hi Fred

First - thanks for the quick reply!

No, I don't know how this got changed. All I know is that it changed between version 48 and 53 somewhere.

I tried that add-on but it does not seem to have an option for customizing this item.

I am attaching a screenshot of the element in question.

Actually after some digging I found out what happened:

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/filelog/85e5d15c31691c89b82d6068c26260416493071f/toolkit/locales/en-US/chrome/global/findbar.dtd

• Mike de Boer - Bug 435326 - change accesskey for en_US 'Highlight All' from 'a' to 'l'

I will post to that bug requesting the behavior/shortcut key to be changed back to the much more user-friendly one.

The last remaining portion of this question is if there is a way to customize that key for my browser as a temporary workaround?

Maybe try the en-GB Firefox version as a search on DXR shows that the accesskey for en-GB hasn't been changed for some reasons.

• https://dxr.mozilla.org/l10n-mozilla-release/source/en-GB/toolkit/chrome/global/findbar.dtd

<!ENTITY highlightAll.label "Highlight All">
<!ENTITY highlightAll.accesskey "A">

• https://dxr.mozilla.org/l10n-mozilla-release/search?q=regexp%3AhighlightAll.accesskey&redirect=false

That's an interesting suggestion - the en_GB version. I'd like to leave trying this as a last resort as I don't want any spelling dictionaries and other such settings to be switched.

Does anyone know if the language/localization settings are stored in a separate (resource?) file or are they hard-coded in the compiled executable? In other words - is there a file on my computer (and if so which one) that I might be able to tweak and fix the shortcut key?

The en-GB version comes without a dictionary, so you would have to install the en-US dictionary yourself or backup the dictionaries folder in the Firefox program folder and restore this folder afterward.

Wow! Thanks cor-el! This was a lightning fast reply! :)

Onto the matter - reinstalling FF and trying to backup/restore dictionaries and other settings sounds like a lot of pain for this, and on top of that it looks like it may do more harm than good.

I much appreciate the help and this suggestion but I'd rather look to see if there is any other solution first.

This shortcut key must be somehow coded within the product - usually such internationalization settings and strings are delivered either in a separate resource file or bundled in the executable (and I already (unsuccessfully) searched for 'High&light' which is how shortcut keys are stored in windows' resource/executable) Editing this resource file is what seems to me as the easiest solution at this time. The question is which file holds that information?

These files are stored in an omni.ja archive and editing this file is not recommended since this is a file that is packed in a special way to make it possible to read it very fast in one go (i.e. no jumping around necessary).

• view-source:resource://gre/chrome/en-US/locale/en-US/global/findbar.dtd
• view-source:chrome://global/locale/findbar.dtd

It is not too difficult to install the en-GB version and installing a dictionary only takes a few seconds. You can do a custom install in a different program folder if you want to test this at first or use the Firefox portable version.

• http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable

Thanks a lot for the info about omni.ja!

I'll take that as the answer.

I will try some of the suggestions and if I need any further help I'll open a separate ticket.

Thanks again to the entire support team and kudos for the great work! :)