1598658 - Several hyperlinks are hidden behind the preview URL when using the keyboard to navigate to them

Status: REOPENED

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect, P3)

Description

[Robert Martin [:romartin], Ecosystem QA]

Attachment: Keyboard navigation issue Moments page.mov

[Affected versions]:

• Firefox Release 70.0.1, Build ID: 20191030021342

[Affected Platforms]:

• All Windows
• All Linux
• All Mac

[Prerequisites]:

• Sync the CFR messages from the Remote Settings stage server.
• Have the browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.asrouter.devtoolsEnabled pref set to true.
• Have the profile that is older than 30 days. (You can modify that by updating the created key in {profileDir}/times.json)
• Do not have sync turned on.

[Steps to reproduce]:

1. Open the browser with the profile from prerequisites.
2. Click the “Show” button next to the WNP_MOMENTS_SYNC message from the about:newtab#asrouter page and restart the browser.
3. Navigate to “Sign In” button located in the bottom of the page using keyboard navigation.
4. Press Tab once.
5. Observe the page.

[Expected result]:

• All the hyperlinks are focused and correctly displayed.

[Actual result]:

• Several hyperlinks are focused and hidden behind the preview URL.

[Notes]:

• The “Sign In” button located on the bottom half of the page is partially hidden behind the preview URL.
• The “Why am I seeing this?” hyperlink is completely hidden behind the preview URL.
• The “Brand Standards” hyperlink is completely hidden behind the preview URL.
• The “Reality” hyperlink is completely hidden behind the preview URL.
• Attached a screen recording of the issue.

Comment 1

[Alex Gibson [:agibson]]

Just so I understand, this bug is that the URL preview in the status bar overlaps some of the web page content? Or am I misunderstanding?

If that's correct, I'd say this is an invalid bug - or at least one that the web page has no control over. The URL status bar is a Firefox feature, and not part of the web page.

Comment 2

[Justin Crawford [:hoosteeno] [:jcrawford]]

I agree with comment 1. The length of the URLs (they are quite long) may be causing the URL preview to behave in surprising ways, but it doesn't look like a bug on the webpage to me.

Comment 3

[Eric Renaud [:erenaud]]

Closing as invalid.

Comment 4

[Robert Martin [:romartin], Ecosystem QA]

I understand and agree with you that this is not a webpage issue, but in my opinion it is an issue nonetheless.

I’ve tested the page on multiple browsers and came out with the following results:

• Safari does not seem to support keyboard navigation at all.
• Cliqz and Vivaldi have the same behavior as Firefox as in, several hyperlinks are being hidden behind the preview URL.
• Microsoft Internet Explorer and Edge perform a bit better than Firefox, the difference being that the scrollbar jumps once you reach the end of the page, but there still are a few links hidden behind the URL preview.
• Google Chrome and Opera do a good job in having the elements completely visible throughout the whole page while using only keyboard navigation.

Comment 5

[Botond Ballo [:botond]]

(In reply to Robert Martin from comment #0)

[Prerequisites]:

• Sync the CFR messages from the Remote Settings stage server.

I don't know what this means (what is "CFR"? what is the "Remote Settings stage server"?), but is this really necessary to reproduce the issue?

Is it not sufficient to navigate to the URL that appears in the video (https://www.mozilla.org/de/firefox/welcome/3/) in any profile, and then follow steps 3-5?

Comment 6

[Botond Ballo [:botond]]

Anyways, it sounds like the request here is to refine the "scroll into view" logic that's triggered by keyboard navigation, such that if the navigation also causes a URL popup to appear, then the popup does not overlap the element that came into focus as a result of the navigation.

Comment 7

[Jonathan Kew [:jfkthame]]

This seems likely to be more of a front-end issue than Core::Layout, I think; moving to Firefox::General for further triage. ISTM that the front-end code that decides to display a URL popup for a focused link may need to somehow inform the scroll-into-view operation about this so that it can be taken into account.

Comment 8

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Dão, ISTR there was a limit on how wide this URL status tooltip was supposed to be. Should we make this more aggressive so we run less risk of occluding content?

Comment 9

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to :Gijs (he/him) from comment #8)

Dão, ISTR there was a limit on how wide this URL status tooltip was supposed to be. Should we make this more aggressive so we run less risk of occluding content?

We don't impose the limit by default, only after we had to move the panel away from the mouse:
https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/a92ed79b0bc746159fc31af1586adbfa9e45e264/browser/base/content/browser.css#938,948
https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/a92ed79b0bc746159fc31af1586adbfa9e45e264/browser/base/content/tabbrowser.js#6324

Ideally we'd take the currently focused element into account along with the mouse pointer.