1661490 - Keyboard navigation of {inline tabs} in pseudo dialogs like "New Identity / Edit <identity>" is seriously disfunctional (cursor keys fail, Ctrl+Tab randomly includes main window tabs)

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Account Manager, defect)

Description

[Jean-Philippe MENGUAL]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:81.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/81.0

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open the Account settings
2. Choose Manage the identities
3. Create a new identity or edit an existing one
4. A dialog, similar as the one I have in the main account settings dialog, appears.
5. With the tab key, put your caret on the tab list.

Actual results:

The arrow keys should change the tab page.

Expected results:

Here, nothing happens. The user needs to use ctrl-tab to switch the tab page. But doing this, while switching the tab page, the caret also changes to the main window tab page of Thunderbird. Need to do ctrl-tab again to come back to the settings tab page and so on.

Not friendly at all for end users with disabilities, who need to use keyboard only.

Comment 1

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Thanks, Jean-Philippe, I found bug 1661679 when investigating this: Sadly, all content access keys from the former Options and Account Settings dialogs are now broken since those contents now live in tabs rather than their own focused windows.

Confirming exactly as described.

This bug 1661490 is even worse:

• Keyboard navigation with Ctrl+Tab in Edit Identity dialog is a complete mess, randomly alternating between inline "tabs" on what looks like a focused dialog, and application tabs in the background.
• In spite of having focus, inline tabs cannot be navigated with cursor keys.
• In my first attempts, some inline tabs were actually skipped and appeared completely inaccessible, but trying Ctrl+Tab a dozen times eventually seems to get there, as reported. Complete nightmare for a blind person who won't understand what is happening.
• Any inline tabs in any (pseudo) dialogs will be affected, so there might be more.