638918 - highlight border of pane when element in pane (or the pane) has focus

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

windows - vista and win7

there is no highlight of pane's border when an element in the pane (or the pane) has focus. So if you're coming back to your computer after some period of time for example, it's hard to know which pane has an item in focus. And by extension finding the item in focus is less immediate - it should be made more obvious, with the UI drawing your eye to some area of the screen.

using F6 to go between panes:
* folder highlights, but folder pane border does not
* message thread highlights, but thread pane border does not
* messages preview has no visible indication whatsoever

bwinton: on Mac, message preview pane ... I get a line of dots around it if I tab to it, but nothing if I click it.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

http://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_messaging/topics/no_indication_which_pane_has_the_focus

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

is a linux bug needed?  reporter of http://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_messaging/topics/no_indication_which_pane_has_the_focus is linux

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

xref Bug 370663 - Focus not indicated and :focus not set properly on tab/ctrl-tab stop elements, incl Message Pane

Comment 4

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

This was actually reported in 3.1.x, I'm kinda surprised about it as it doesn't look like that many people have complained about it.

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

On windows, there is no border for v2. And also none for v3.0

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

xref Bug 491338 - Remove tree focus rings again

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Attachment: SM 2.0.3 screen shot

SM 2.0.3 provides this.
SM 2.1b does not.

Comment 8

[Seungbeom Kim]

Isn't this a regression? I think Thunderbird (or Netscape Messenger, maybe) did display the focus in the past, but I don't remember when.

Anyway, I get continually bitten by this, and I'm surprised this remains unfixed for a long time.

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

This should be better with current beta?

Comment 10

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

Oh, interesting.
We don't highlight a pane if the focus is on a child item as the element itself gets highlighted and not the pane.
This seems to be an old paradigm that is not used anymore.
I recommend to close this bug.