Why, oh, why has the keyboard shortcut for cycling through tabs been changed in the new Firefox beta 1.5? What could possess the developers to change the elegant ctrl+tab shortcut, which is easily pressed with the left hand only, to the despicable command+option+right/left arrow?

The fact that they added another key to the shortcut isn’t too bad. I could handle pressing command+option+tab to cycle through my tabs, but I can’t handle reaching to the right side of the keyboard. While yes, this sounds trivial, but it’s a serious user-interface problem with the new shortcut — the kind of thing that developers can’t overlook. Most people keep their right hand on the mouse and use their left for keyboard shortcuts. Hitting the new shortcut for cycling through tabs requires moving your left hand to the right side of the keyboard and performing an awkword motion to hit the three required keys simultaneously. Alternately, you could take your right hand off the mouse to hit the arrow key, but that’s even worse.

Firefox beta 1.5 looks brilliant except for this one error. Please, please change the shortcut back!