1233924 - Page Down key scrolls thread pane instead of message pane

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Dave Tutelman]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/47.0.2526.106 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

(1) I click on a message in the scan-line window, and it opens in the message window.
(2) I begin to read the message. I click on the vertical scrollbar and the message pages down. So far, everything is fine.
(3) For my next page down, I use the PgDn key. This causes a page down in the scan-line window, not the message window. In fact, it opens a new message, corresponding to the new scan line. I have lost my place in the original message.

This operation has been observed in Windows 7 (by me and by Zenos) and Linux (by Zenos).

I can duplicate every time the same misbehavior with all the page control keys: Home, End, UpArrow, DownArrow, PgUp, PgDn. It isn't just the PgDn key.


Actual results:

The thread pane scrolled, and the new message (after scrolling) was opened in the message pane. I lost my place in both panes.


Expected results:

The message pane should have scrolled to the next page in the message. The thread pane should stay exactly where it was.

BTW, it operates correctly (this way, as expected) if the text part of the message pane was clicked instead of the scroll bar. So we have a seriously mixed operation here.

Comment 1

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

The current behavior is correct. Since you haven't changed the keyboard focus (clicking the scrollbar doesn't change focus, which is consistent with other Windows applications), it's still focused on the thread pane. Thus, common keyboard actions like Page Down apply to the thread pane.

If you'd like to use the keyboard to scroll down inside a message while the focus is elsewhere, you can use the spacebar.

Comment 2

[Dave Tutelman]

I'm disappointed but resigned. I am unable to find a counterexample, so I understand your reasoning. I still think it's the wrong way for a program to behave, but there is precedent.