In Windows the right-hand Alt key serves as AltGraph (ISO-Level-3-Shift) on some layouts (for example, many European language layouts), to allow generating additional printable characters. Internally the key generates Ctrl+Alt modifiers, so that Chrome reports all of Control, Alt and AltGraph in the flags for these keys. In this change, Chrome distinguishes AltGraph from Ctrl+Alt under Windows for consistency with modifiers on other platforms. See the comments for how this helps developers.
Status in Chromium
Enabled by default
(tracking bug)
Consensus & Standardization
After a feature ships in Chrome, the values listed here are not guaranteed to be up to date.
- Positive
- No signal
- No signals
Owner
Search tags
keyevent, keydown, keypress, keyup, altgraph, control, alt, modifiers,Last updated on 2020-11-09
Comments
Note: This change applies to Windows only. For developers this removes a weird edge-case from keyboard event modifier handling. If an app handles keydown/keypress/keyup to implement shortcuts, it will no longer need work-arounds to cope with certain (mainly European) keyboard layouts. For example, if an app uses Ctrl+# as a shortcut (as GMail did) then previously the app would need to check for both Ctrl, and for AltGraph, otherwise French users would not be able to use it.