1575749 - Toolbar keyboard navigation by character

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Toolbars and Customization, enhancement)

Description

[James Teh [:Jamie]]

Bug 1436086 made it possible to reach all toolbar buttons via the keyboard in a linear fashion. While this is a big step forward from having no keyboard access to the toolbar, this can be inefficient where there are a lot of toolbar buttons and/or a user frequently uses particular buttons. I propose that users be able to navigate toolbars by typing the first few letters of the button name, similar to our support for character navigation within HTML select size>1 controls. This allows for a huge boost in efficiency without impacting existing functionality or complicating the user experience in any way.

Comment 1

[James Teh [:Jamie]]

Attachment: Bug 1575749: Implement toolbar navigation by typed character.

When focused on a toolbar button, users can now type the first (or first few) characters of another button's name to jump directly to that button.
The search characters are cleared after 1 second or if a non-character key is pressed.
This is similar to the typed character navigation implemented for HTML select controls.

Comment 2

[Marco Zehe (:MarcoZ)]

Nice!!!

Comment 3

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/9424c2a92af4
Implement toolbar navigation by typed character. r=Gijs

Comment 4

[Stefan Hindli [:stefan_hindli]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/9424c2a92af4

Comment 5

[Bogdan Tara[:bogdan_tara | bogdant]]

https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/9424c2a92af4