Modifer keys for mouse movement #581

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1. route commented on Oct 17, 2026

   

   route

   on Oct 17, 2026

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   Looked into this more closely. The gap is real: Mouse#down, #up and #click accept modifiers:, but Mouse#move doesn't, so there's no public way to do a modified drag. Even click(modifiers:) sends the preceding mousemove without them.

   I'd rather not go with Ferrum::Mouse.with_modifier_key(:shift) { } though:

   • It's class-level, so the state would be shared across all pages/threads instead of belonging to a page.
   • It keeps keyboard and mouse state separate, while in a real browser holding Shift affects both. Today keyboard.down(:shift) followed by keyboard.down("a") doesn't carry the modifier either, since each call starts from scratch.

   Proposal, similar to how Puppeteer/Playwright model it:

   1. Keyboard tracks held modifiers: keyboard.down(:shift) sets the bit, keyboard.up(:shift) clears it. Both key events and all mouse events (move, down, up, click) pick it up automatically.
   2. Mouse#move gets an explicit modifiers: option like down/up, overriding the held state when given.

   Your case then needs no new API:

   page.keyboard.down(:shift)
   page.mouse.move(x: 10, y: 10).down.move(x: 200, y: 200, steps: 10).up
   page.keyboard.up(:shift)

   On top of that we could add an instance-level helper, e.g. page.keyboard.hold(:shift) { ... } with up in an ensure, if it turns out to be handy. This would also let Cuprite support Capybara's drag_to(..., drop_modifiers: [:shift]).

   If that works for you, PR is welcome, otherwise I'll pick it up.
2. route

   added a commit that references this issue on Oct 18, 2026

   feat(keyboard): hold modifiers for keyboard and mouse input inside a …

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   5d4a0d7
3. route

   closed this as completedin #655on Oct 18, 2026
4. route

   added 2 commits that reference this issue on Oct 20, 2026

   feat(drag): hold drop modifiers while moving to the target

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   3353ba2

   feat(drag): hold drop modifiers while moving to the target (#344)

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   a232e7a