470659 - Message reader: make focussed contacts actionable (pressing ENTER on contacts should do default action e.g. Compose to, Ctrl+c to copy full email address, Ctrl+S to add to AB, Ctrl+E to edit contact)

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, enhancement)

Description

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.5) Gecko/2008120122 Firefox/3.0.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1b3pre) Gecko/20081219 Shredder/3.0b2pre

Following up from Mike Cowperthwaite's complaint in Bug 458635 -  Envelope tabbing in addresses makes unnecessary stops (should be only one stop per contact)

In Bug 458635 comment #0, Mike says: 
When you use Tab to advance to the message body, the focus moves into the
envelope panel.  When it gets to an address, a focus indicator (dashed line)
appears around the displayed name (or name+address or address-only, however it
appears) -- but there is apparently no useable action.  Enter does nothing;
Space acts as scroll/move-to-next; Ctrl+C doesn't copy the text.  Why are we
here?
Tab again; we're on the Star icon.  Again, no keyboard response is possible.

Supplementing and in full support of Mike's call for having just a single tab stop for each address contact (including star), and with respect to the new bubbles UI for contacts (xref bug 457012), I hereby suggest making focussed contacts keyboard actionable (This bug should be added to message reader tracker Bug 456814).


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Use TAB to place focus indicator (currently dotted) on a given contact in new message reader's header pane. Focus indicator includes the star.
2. a) Press Enter (expecting to trigger contact's default action)
b) Press Space (expecting to either select or trigger contact's default action)
c) Press Ctrl+C (expecting to copy the contact)

Actual Results:  
Nothing, except that in b), Space acts as scroll/move-to-next

Expected Results:  
a) Pressing Enter on a focussed contact should trigger the default action of that contact (bring up the context menu with contact actions)

b) Pressing Space on a focussed contact should either trigger the default action OR (at a later stage) allow to select that contact as one of multiple selected contacts. However, I don't really expect this to happen very soon...

c) Pressing Ctrl+C on a focussed contact should copy the full email address (name + email) to the clipboard

d) Maybe there could be some sort of direct shortcut to add/edit a focussed contact directly, like ctrl+s to add/save new contact to address book and ctrl+e to edit it. Obviously, these shortcuts would only work when a contact is focussed. I'm not very sure about d), though.


Surprise: Another case where (even high-ranking) people expect Thunderbird to respect and act on current focus...
Bryan, evidence is growing that people ARE able to keep track of focus and they  DO expect focussed objects to take sensible keyboard input... ;-) (with a blinking eye on Brian's desire to "protect" those who are unable to keep track of focus as per his recent hypothesis in Bug 315144 comment #39 -  Pressing delete on an attachment within the mail window deletes message instead of attachment)

Comment 1

[David Ascher (:davida)]

I think this is all good stuff, but doesn't reach the blocking criterion.  Patches would be great.

Comment 2

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Confirming as enhancement, per David's comment 1.

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

The message reader is being largely rebuilt for version 115. So this issue is will not be fixed for the current version 102.

If the problem exists in version 115 when it becomes available in July please file a new bug. You can also evalute the rebuilt reader in 3-4 weeks by trying a beta build.