146045 - key to leave form and focus content area

Status: NEW

(Core :: DOM: UI Events & Focus Handling, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Jesse Ruderman]

From discussion about http://labs1.google.com/keys/ :

[e-mail] (Aan`allein) wrote in message
news:<[e-mail]>...
> 'A' moves the focus to the search box, but how do you get out again? I
> can imagine regular characters can't be used for this, but for example
> [escape] could be used to switch back to your previous position. Would
> be good to have.

I think Mozilla should have Escape to "leave form" built in.  That would be
easier to remember than Opera's F9 to "focus content area", and it would be
easier to predict than "tab", which sometimes focuses another text field rather
than allowing the user to scroll.

This would be useful on on pages like amazon.com that focus the search field
assuming that most users scroll with the mouse.  It would also help on pages
like http://labs1.google.com/keys/ that use single-letter shortcuts but also
have textboxes.

Comment 1

[Aaron Leventhal]

You did not talk about the fact that Escape is also used to stop loading, and
pause timed content such as animation. This feature is broken at the moment, but
that's the standard use of Escape.

Do you think these two uses of Escape should happen simultaneously?

Comment 2

[Jesse Ruderman]

See also bug 131134, which asked for this feature without suggesting a key.

Comment 3

[Sander]

*** Bug 211844 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 4

[Aaron Leventhal]

How about typing Ctrl+L, Tab? It's not a single keystroke, but it works.

Comment 5

[timeless]

'no'

picture this:

<frameset rows="*,*">
<frame src='data:text/html,&lt;input value="no me"&gt;'>
<frame src='data:text/html,&lt;input value="start here"&gt;'>
</frameset>

your 'solution' focusses 'not me', not the body of the second frame.

Comment 6

[Malcolm Rowe]

*** Bug 226322 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 7

[Aaron Leventhal]

Doesn't Escape already stop animations and scripts from running on a page?

Comment 8

[[e-mail]]

Are F6/Shift+F6 any use?

Comment 9

[Jesse Ruderman]

See also bug 277808, same bug in the Firefox product (might be a dup).

Comment 10

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

*** Bug 277808 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 11

[Jesse Ruderman]

*** Bug 345949 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 12

[Jesse Ruderman]

From the most recent dup: it might be useful if the same shortcut also worked when focus is in chrome (e.g. the address bar).

Comment 13

[[e-mail]]

I just hit F6 until I get to the frame I want.

Comment 14

[Ezequiel Panepucci]

(In reply to comment #13)
> I just hit F6 until I get to the frame I want.

not good enough. I want a shortcut that focus exactly
the content page, ie *all* frames.

Ctrl-F6 would be good.

I just don't want to cycle *until* I find the right place,
I figure the content frame is important enough to be granted
a shortcut.

Comment 15

[David Bolter [:davidb] (NeedInfo me for attention)]

Mass un-assigning bugs assigned to Aaron.

Comment 16

[alexander.kern]

Until Firefox 57 (Quantum) escape worked for me to go from the address bar back to site content. Now I have to hit F6 which is harder to hit and doesn't get me back to the content necessarily but will focus on something else and will lead to scrolling back to the top of the page sometimes. Or when I was focused on a textarea like this one here at bugzilla.mozilla.org hitting escape doesn't bring me back to that. It's also confusing that sometimes nothing happens when I press escape. For example when the current URL is shown. But when you write in something you can cancel the suggestion by hitting escape, then another hit will go back to the current URL. What I'd like is for another hit to go back to the previously focused content/item.

Also, hitting escape when you're focused on a video on youtube.com (which happens by default) nothing happens. You can't get the focus away from the video by hitting Escape. However F6 works, but above mentioned problems arise and I need to press it two times. I also don't like that nothing happens when I press Escape. Is that because youtube's javascript file intercepts the escape button? Could it also prevent Firefox in the same way from changing the focus with F6? I think capturing or intercepting Escape and F6 should not be possible/allowed. But the youtube problem may be independent from this issue. Should I file a new one on that? This reminds me of the time when Flash captured all button presses and your only way to get out of it was a meta key or a click with the mouse...