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ShiftFox
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Hebrew version
I don't care, I just want the program!
An article about this program in NRG!
ShiftFox is a small Windows program I wrote to "fix" the problem that Mozilla-based programs have with switching text direction in text boxes ("Right aligning" for Hebrew or "Left aligning" for English, in addition
to changing directionality). In Firefox, one can only switch text direction with Ctrl+Shift+X, and not Ctrl+Shift like in other Windows applications. In Thunderbird, this feature is given by
BiDi Mail UI, an add-on written by Eyal Rozenberg, Asaf Romano, Ilya Konstantinov and others.
This limitation is a very big nuisance to many Firefox users, expecially "light" users that aren't aware of the Mozilla-specific key combination's existance at all.
ShiftFox handles this problem by "translating" presses of Ctrl+Shift to presses of Ctrl+Shift+X when the active window belongs to a Mozilla-based program.
The program runs hidden in the background, and works like this:
- Every 250ms, ShiftFox checks which window is active.
- If the active window belongs to a Mozilla-based program (Firefox,
Thunderbird, Seamonkey, etc.), ShiftFox activates the translation from Ctrl+Shift to Ctrl+Shift+X.
- If the active window does not belong to a Mozilla-based program, ShiftFox deactivates the key translation.
What does that mean to me?
When using Firefox when ShiftFox is running, you can use Ctrl+Shift like in any other application, like Word, Notepad, Internet Explorer, etc.
Important notes:
- The program cannot be closed because there is no user interface. You can close it using the Task Manager without anything bad happening. Just look for ShiftFox.exe under Processes.
ShiftFox shouldn't interrupt your work in any way, so it doesn't really matter, so I didn't bother.
- If an add-on that uses Ctrl+Shift+X is installed, it may cause problems.
One such add-on that I know of is Web Developer. You can choose another hotkey for reducing text size in its settings dialog, nder Keys.
- You can't open ShiftFox.exe ore than once for the same session. This is not a bug.
Having two instances can cause problems, so I disabled it.
- ShiftFox is free. I MAKE NO GUARANTEES OF ANY KIND AND WILL NOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE THAT MAY HAPPEN.. If you're afraid of what may happen -
Inspect the program's code before running it, it's free to download from this page. I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY
and I require nothing from you, except for one thing - Give credit where credit is due. If you change ShiftFox or distribute it, you must state that it (Or some of the code) was written by Liron Newman. Other than that - Go nuts!
I'd be happy to see someone making something better with this.
- I found a way to do this without an external application. Now we just need someone to put it in Firefox... BiDi Mail UI does it for Thunderbird.
Files
The program: ShiftFox.exe (Just save the file somewhere and run it when you want to use it. No installation required)
The source code: ShiftFox-code.zip
(VC6, no MFC)
Have fun!