Safari 3.1 & GMail Shift Key Problem (Updated)
Friday, March 21st, 2008
Update: As of Mar. 21, 2008, Google has rolled out a fix to this problem. If you see the “Older Version” hyperlink in the upper-right corner of your Gmail window, you are using v2 of the Gmail app and should no longer experience the Shift Key problem on Safari 3.1.
Safari 3.1 and Gmail do not appear to be working and playing well together. This widely reported problem [link 1, link 2, link 3] seems to have reared its ugly head with the release of Safari 3.1 on Tuesday, and affects users who are using either v1 of Gmail or the version of Gmail that is hosted with Google Apps (when you host your domain on Google Apps [read my previous post on this useful and free-as-in-beer service]).
If you are one of The Affected, you probably have a nice dent in your desk where you’ve been banging your forehead repeatedly. Specifically, the symptom is that hitting a modifier key like Shift, Cmd, Option, etc. will jump you to the “to” field or will otherwise try to activate some keyboard shortcut even if keyboard shortcuts are disabled. This bug is enough to drive any normal human being to murder.
The Work-Around
If you’re on the standard version of Gmail, ensure that you have the “newer version” selected. This is a hyperlink that appears in the upper-right corner of your Gmail screen. If you see the link “older version,” you’re theoretically are good to go.
If you’re using the version of Gmail hosted by Google apps, the only published work-around I’ve come across is provided by the Gmail team itself: switch to plain-text formatting; the problem is specific to rich-text editing.
Of course, you can always type like ee cummings and avoid the use of capitals or punctuation. Oh, and the obvious solution is to slum it over in Firefox for the interim.
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