Modern Web Issues

Sometime ago I noticed a weird behaviour in my Firefox. On certain webpages it wouldn’t let me type accented characters for which there is no dedicated key on my keyboard layout. I am Slovak living in Prague, so I often need a lot of them. In high school I learned how to type with all ten fingers without looking at the keyboard. But I learned this on a Slovak layout. That means I need to switch to this layout everywhere, otherwise my muscle memory turns against me.

Unfortunately, we cannot cram all the accented characters from both Czech and Slovak language onto the keyboard. Sometimes I need to first press either the ´ or ˇ button (in reality it is the same button on the keyboard, but the latter is accessed via shift key) and then the letter. Example would be: ´ + l or ˇ + e.

But some places like Discord or Reddit decided that they need to ship with glorified JavaScript text area instead of a simple text box. These rich-text editors literally try to self-destruct every time they encounter a dead key. Obviously the issue is more complicated, it is a mixture of the web devs being forced to cram useless functionality into something so mundane as a text editor and Linux being a princess when it comes to input-handling.

After some digging I found out that Firefox ships a solution to this, naturally buried in the about:config heap of options.

All you need to do is find this option: editor.htmleditor.inputevent.hack.no_dispatch_after_compositionend.addl and add the domains which don’t work (domain1.com,domain2.com), you get the idea.

This whole architectural hubris colliding with the Chromium monoculture is slowly pushing me towards a hypothetical hermit life somewhere in the forest. Just ship stuff that works for most of us!