1362147 - Webextension command not executed when focus on location bar

Status: REOPENED

(WebExtensions :: Frontend, defect, P5)

Description

[sblask]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Ubuntu; Linux x86_64; rv:53.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/53.0
Build ID: 20170418123315

Steps to reproduce:

Create a webextension with one command that uses Ctrl-Y and implement the listener, see https://github.com/sblask/firefox-open-tabs-next-to-current/commit/9748304517a9ca27d5ce17f439d125736a0b00d4

web-ext run

Once Firefox started, focus location bar and type Ctrl-Y


Actual results:

Nothing, the listener code is never called. If I set the focus somewhere else, the listener code is called


Expected results:

Keyboard shortcuts defined through the commands API should work globally no matter where the focus is.

Comment 1

[sblask]

The problem occurs in Firefox 53 and the 55 Nightly. For me it's worse on the Nightly because I use the shortcut to open a new empty tab where the focus is in the location bar by default(which is great, but it took a while to understand what was going on).

Comment 2

[:shell escalante]

commands are on browser, but we intentionally don't execute when location bar focused.  

Is this somethign we want to change going forward?

Comment 3

[sblask]

Any good reason for that? It's very irritating and not obvious.

Commands work fine in Chromium when location bar is focused.

Comment 4

[Andy McKay]

Duping to 1324697, which is about the entire browser and got through design-decision-needed successfully.

Comment 6

[sblask]

I kept on having problems with various browser shortcuts for a while, I just realized it's the same problem. Ctrl-Shift-A doesn't work for example when the location bar is focused. And I just realized it's the same for any text input. I thought maybe it's because of a website swallowing keys, but it's the same even here: https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_form_submit Where extension shortcuts might be debatable, browser shortcuts should definitely always work!