1715437 - opening about:preferences#home sets focus to the search field preventing hotkeys to work

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Keyboard Navigation, defect, P3)

Description

[Lorenz]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:89.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/89.0

Steps to reproduce:

open about:preferences#home and try to use any of the underscored hotkeys

if you enter the page using via adressbar the focus is now on the search field,
or on the navigation bar if you use the mouse

Actual results:

using any of the underlined hotkeys does only work with shift+alt+hotkey (as already mentioned in 1200954)
or if you use the tab key to move the focus to any of the setting items. Then the plain hotkey (no alt, shift or ctrl requiered) does work.

Expected results:

hotkeys should work consistently regardless of the focus

requiring shift+alt is unexpected behaviour and I was not able to find any documentation for that (besides bugzilla).

plain hotkey (without alt) is also unexpected and does not work when the focus is on a input field.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Preferences' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 2

[Raluca Popovici, Desktop QA]

I tested this behaviour in about:preferences#general page on Fx 89.0 and Nightly 91.0a1 using Win 10 and Shift+Alt+ undercsored hotkeys works for me.

Please test if the issue occurs in safe mode. Here is a link that can help you do that:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode

If the issue still persists, please test it using a new profile, you can find the steps to do that below:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles?redirectlocale=en-US&redirectslug=Managing-profiles#w_starting-the-profile-manager

If you still reproduce this issue please provide us the exact steps that help us reproduce on our end.

Comment 3

[Lorenz]

I never said Shift+Alt+ didn't work ... but that I could not find documentation about this (besides a bugzilla entry)

I think this is irritating/unexpected because the rest of the userinterface uses the familiar alt modifier.
There at least should exist an easy to find/prominently placed information about the shift+alt requirement.

The second point I wanted to make: the requirement for shift+alt is inconsistent.

If the focus is on one of the buttons with a marked hotkey ( "restore defaults, use current pages, use bookmark...) the hotkeys for this keys work without modifier key. That is plain R, C or B trigger the respective action directly. For R and C this might lead to unwanted behaviour / data loss when happening accidentally (for instance if the focus is not were the user thinks it is)

if the focus is on any other item on the page shift+alt is required.

As I now know about the shift+alt requirement (althought I don't understand it), I think at least the inconsistent hotkey behavoir should be fixed.
That is plain R, C or B should not trigger the associated action directly.

Comment 4

[Raluca Popovici, Desktop QA]

I will move this issue to Keyboard Navigation component to involve dev team to provide clear documentation (if existent).

Furthermore, considering your specific issue described, it could still need some more clarity.
The steps you take are:

1. Open browser.
2. Open preferences page
3. Home section, "Homepage and new windows" subsection
4. Select the "Custom URLs..." option
5. Focus on the (let's say) "Restore defaults" button.
6. Press R
   Actual: The action is made (Restore Defaults button action is made)
   Expected: The action is not made, but it is with hotkey "Shift+Alt+R"

Did I understand correctly? Please correct the steps if not.

Comment 5

[Raluca Popovici, Desktop QA]

I'll mark this issue as Resolved > Incomplete because of the lack of information. Feel free to re-open if the issue is still reproducible on your end in the latest FF versions and add your response for comment4.