1258765 - [Linux] Reader Mode intro popup (about "Reader View") steals focus from Firefox window, which prevents user from scrolling article with keyboard

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Toolkit :: Reader Mode, defect, P5)

Description

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

STR:
 1. In a fresh Firefox profile, load some longish page that we can render in Reader View.
 For example:
   1a) visit http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11
   1b) click "HTML" or "Plain Text"

 2. Try to scroll using the keyboard -- e.g. spacebar, PageDown, downarrow.

 3. Switch focus away from & back to Firefox (e.g. Alt-Tab away, and then Alt-Tab back)

 4. Try to scroll again.

ACTUAL RESULTS:
 - In step 2, no scrolling actually happens. It seems the popup has stolen keyboard focus.
 - In step 4, scrolling does happen; we've reclaimed keyboard focus after the alt-tab operation.

EXPECTED RESULTS:
 - Scrolling should be possible in step 2. The popup should not steal focus from the page.

Comment 1

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

This is not a regression (or not a recent one at least) -- I can reproduce this in current release (45) as well as Nightly (48).

Comment 2

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Daniel Holbert [:dholbert] from comment #1)
> This is not a regression (or not a recent one at least) -- I can reproduce
> this in current release (45) as well as Nightly (48).

This is filed very generically. Do you see it with any other popups than the reader mode one?

Comment 3

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

I've only seen it with the reader mode one.  I've just tested two other types of doorhanger-popups, and I can't reproduce with them:
 - Geolocation permission: tried loading https://forecast.io/ (in a smallish window so that there's something to scroll).  After a few seconds, a location permissions doorhanger appears. I'm still able to scroll with arrowkeys.
 - Password-save notification: tried visiting my bank's website. Typed in username and password & pressed enter. A "save password" doorhanger appeared, but I was still able to scroll on the landing page.

So, this may be specific to this Reader View popup. Updating summary/component accordingly.

Comment 4

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

[tweaking summary to include both "Reader Mode" (the name of the component) & "Reader View" (the text that's actually displyaed on the popup), for searchability]

Comment 5

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Actually, on further investigation, it looks like the popup makes my Firefox window become no longer the foreground window -- the title-bar darkens when the Reader Mode popup appears, as it does when another window has stolen focus.

This definitely does not happen with e.g. location permission popups.

Comment 6

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Attachment: screencast #1 (watch the titlebar -- main Firefox window loses focus 5 seconds in, when popup appears)

Comment 7

[:Gijs (he/him)]

I expect that this is a side-effect of that panel being noautohide and therefore level="top" on Linux. If so, this is restricted to Linux (just checked, can't reproduce on Windows), and indeed restricted to this popup (the other doorhangers won't have this problem).

I also believe that means we can't fix it independent of having it be so hard to dismiss. It seems to already have the "noautofocus" attribute, which seems to not be enough, so beyond that I don't think this is independently fixable... though panels on Linux are especially buggy, and if you have time to invest in those, it's possible you could fix bugs in the XUL code for that... I don't know if that's worth the time investment, though. :-\

Comment 8

[:Gijs (he/him)]

This popup was removed.