Update: I've been able to mitigate these issues, by swapping the Control and Alt keys in Chromebook configuration. As a side effect, this produces PC-like cut-copy-paste physical motion, instead of Mac-like. That's fine for me, but YMMV.
However, beyond trivial browsing, I find it virtually unusable, because I keep instinctually hitting alt-left to go to beginning of line (because that's how it is on the Mac), and it keeps doing browser-back and eating my typing into web pages. It's happened three times tonight already.
I want to throw this thing into the wall so hard it will break into a zillion pieces so it will never steal any of my work ever again. The only thing stopping me is the motivation to write this post so I can make sure it never eats any of your work.
Apparently google has decided to map browser-back to alt-left and beginning-of-line to search-left, and there is no way to remap them, because, well, i have no idea. People hack around Chromebook keymap issues with custom keyboards and extensions, but it's not possible to remap this, because it's not a key, it's a key-sequence that chrome interprets. I could swap the alt and search keys entirely, but then anytime i pressed alt I would get search, which seems even worse.
The irony is.. I don't want a browser-back shortcut at all. I always disable it on windows and mac laptops. I can handle actually clicking on the browser back button when I want to use it.
If you are a fast typist, and you are used to using Command-Left on the Mac, consider seriously whether you will be able to control yourself before you buy a chromebook.
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