1724918 - Support highlighting required fields

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Firefox :: PDF Viewer, enhancement, P1)

Description

[tct]

Attachment: With PDF.js required fields are not highligted, but they are in Adobe Reader

Some fields are required to be filled, and PDF.JS doesn't highlight them (see screenshot). Perhaps it depends on the XFA JS API that is yet to be implemented.

Comment 1

[Daniel Bodea [:danibodea]]

Please attach the PDF in question for further investigation.
Thank you for your contribution!

Comment 2

[tct]

https://static.anaf.ro/static/10/Anaf/formulare/confirmare_2021_290621.pdf

Comment 3

[Daniel Bodea [:danibodea]]

Attachment: my acrobat reader does not highlight them.png

I'm running Acrobat Reader Continuous Release Version 2021.005.20060 and I don't see a highlight of required fields.

Which version of Acrobat Reader are you running?
Is there a setting that should be set up in order to highlight required fields?

On the other hand, it's worth mentioning that if this highlight is a dynamic element of XFA forms, it is not supported at this time.
@Calixte: What do you think of this bug?

Comment 4

[tct]

I don't have the Windows machine around, but I remember downloading the latest version, probably the same as yours: 2021.005.20060. Maybe you have upgraded and had some settings saved before, which modified the behavior for required fields.

I found this solution in a forum post: Edit > Preferences > Forms > Highlight Color > Show border hover color for fields

I would assume that (red) highlighting required fields is not done through custom JS, instead it is probably specified in the XFA "standard". Custom JS is suggested in this post only for other colors, for recommended (not required) fields.

Comment 5

[Daniel Bodea [:danibodea]]

I can confirm this as an enhancement suggestion. This appears to be a secondary feature of Adobe Reader (deactivated by default, needs activation) that is not implemented in Firefox.

Comment 6

[Calixte Denizet (:calixte)]

It isn't only a matter of XFA, acroform fields have a flag to tell if the field is required or not:
https://www.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/en/devnet/pdf/pdfs/PDF32000_2008.pdf#G11.2097409
It's likely something useful especially to avoid to print a form without all the required info but in the meantime the users must understand by themselves what this red border around a field means.

Comment 7

[Calixte Denizet (:calixte)]

:RT, do you think we should add a red border (or whatever) on required fields in a pdf form ?

Comment 8

[Morgan Reschenberg [:morgan]]

:danibodea - have you looked at this on windows with high contrast mode enabled?
I'd be interested to know if there are differences between the way acrobat behaves and the way we behave there, too.

Comment 9

[James Teh [:Jamie]]

Note that this will need a11y semantics as well, either the HTML required attribute or the aria-required attribute.

Comment 10

[Daniel Bodea [:danibodea]]

Attachment: HCM Black.png

Comment 11

[Daniel Bodea [:danibodea]]

Attachment: HCM White.png

Comment 12

[Daniel Bodea [:danibodea]]

(In reply to Morgan Reschenberg [:morgan] from comment #8)

:danibodea - have you looked at this on windows with high contrast mode enabled?
I'd be interested to know if there are differences between the way acrobat behaves and the way we behave there, too.

I've posted screenshots of a comparison between Adobe Acrobat vs Nightly v99 and how they hangle High Contrast.
Do you need me to do anything else?

Comment 13

[Morgan Reschenberg [:morgan]]

Nope that's great, thank you!

It looks like Adobe is making a choice to forced red styling, ignoring the user's chosen palette. I think we can do better.

Let's use the selectedItem color to draw the highlight when High Contrast Mode is enabled on windows.

Comment 14

[Brendan Dahl [:bdahl]]

Can you set access severity?

Comment 15

[Morgan Reschenberg [:morgan]]

Marking s2 since as I understand it, we're not communicating required status at all here -- users would have to resort to an entirely different viewer to find out which fields are required.

Comment 16

[Romain Testard [:RT]]

(In reply to Calixte Denizet (:calixte) from comment #7)

:RT, do you think we should add a red border (or whatever) on required fields in a pdf form ?

APologies for the delay, I finally got a "Go" from UX so let's implemnt as proposed

Comment 17

[Calixte Denizet (:calixte)]

Attachment: image.png

The fields on the top are required but not the ones on the bottom (with the Night Sky theme on Windows 11).
The css for the required ones:

border: 1.5px solid selectedItem;

and I've the feeling that the contrast level between the border colors for required vs non-required is a bit weak.
:morgan, wdyt ?

Comment 18

[GitHub Bugzilla PR Linker]

Attachment: Link to GitHub pull-request: https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/pull/15000

Comment 19

[Morgan Reschenberg [:morgan]]

(In reply to Calixte Denizet (:calixte) from comment #17)

Created attachment 9280024 [details]
image.png

The fields on the top are required but not the ones on the bottom (with the Night Sky theme on Windows 11).
The css for the required ones:

border: 1.5px solid selectedItem;

and I've the feeling that the contrast level between the border colors for required vs non-required is a bit weak.
:morgan, wdyt ?

We only have a readability "guarantee" between fg/bg pairs (ie. CanvasText/Canvas or ButtonText/ButtonFace).
Because we're using the color semantically, I'm inclined to say this is alright for now. Also, users can customize their theme for more contrast. Re: form fields in general, it looks like we aren't using button colors for the controls, which we should be 😀 but that's a separate issue.

Comment 20

[GitHub Bugzilla PR Linker]

Attachment: Link to GitHub master push: https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/commit/ae9ad1d858209fe79537fc95582223ef762ea67e

Commit merged into master by GitHub
Authored by Jonas Jenwald (Snuffleupagus)

Comment 21

[Marco Castelluccio [:marco]]

Release Note Request (optional, but appreciated)
[Why is this notable]: Users had no way to know which fields are required to be filled in a PDF form.
[Affects Firefox for Android]: No.
[Suggested wording]: Fields required to be filled in PDF forms are now highlighted.
[Links (documentation, blog post, etc)]: N/A

Comment 22

[Donal Meehan [:dmeehan]]

Note added to 103 nightly release notes.
Slightly reworded "Required fields are now highlighted in PDF forms."

Comment 23

[Ardelean Oana, Desktop Test Engineering [:oardelean]]

I can confirm this enhancement is implemented on Firefox 103.0b2(build ID: 20220628190840) and Nightly 104.0a1(build ID: 20220629215821) on macOS 11, Windows 10 64-bits and Ubuntu 22.04.