1759558 - Enable Windows hide-cursor-when-typing by default

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core :: Widget: Win32, task, P1)

Description

[David Parks [:handyman]]

Bug 1757463 added the functionality behind the pref widget.windows.hide_cursor_when_typing (default: false). We want to make that true.

While dogfooding, I've noticed some things we might consider before doing this:

• On Windows 10, Chrome and Edge do not hide the cursor. On MacOS (which has a specific API to support the feature), both Firefox and Chrome already do.

• Tooltips that appear under the cursor don't vanish when typing in this implementation. On Mac, they do. This is easily seen by mousing over and selecting the bottom of the "Search Bugs" text field at the top of this page. The mouseover brings up a tooltip. It disappears as soon as we type on MacOS but does not on Windows.

• On Mac, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-A and Ctrl-V do not hide or show the cursor -- they do not affect the visibility state. This is not true on Windows.

Comment 1

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

WordPad and Notepad honor Windows' "Hide pointer when typing" setting. Below are some comparisons between Firefox's pointer hiding behavior and WordPad and Notepad's.

(In reply to David Parks [:handyman] from comment #0)

• Tooltips that appear under the cursor don't vanish when typing in this implementation. On Mac, they do. This is easily seen by mousing over and selecting the bottom of the "Search Bugs" text field at the top of this page. The mouseover brings up a tooltip. It disappears as soon as we type on MacOS but does not on Windows.

Typing in WordPad makes any open WordPad tooltip disappear, unlike Firefox. (I can't find any tooltips in Notepad.)

• On Mac, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-A and Ctrl-V do not hide or show the cursor -- they do not affect the visibility state. This is not true on Windows.

Ctrl-C, Ctrl-A and Ctrl-V do not hide or show the cursor in WordPad or Notepad, unlike Firefox. But this seems like a pretty minor issue.

Comment 2

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

(In reply to David Parks [:handyman] from comment #0)

• Tooltips that appear under the cursor don't vanish when typing in this implementation. On Mac, they do. This is easily seen by mousing over and selecting the bottom of the "Search Bugs" text field at the top of this page. The mouseover brings up a tooltip. It disappears as soon as we type on MacOS but does not on Windows.

Note that this is the current behavior of Firefox with widget.windows.hide_cursor_when_typing = false. So this behavior isn't regression, though a tooltip floating in space might be a little confusing when there is no mouse pointer.

Chrome has the opposite behavior: it hides the tooltip when typing even though it doesn't hide the mouse pointer.

Comment 3

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

David, is widget.windows.hide_cursor_when_typing = true ready to ride the trains in 101?

Nightly 101 will ride to Beta about two weeks from now (2022-05-02).

Comment 4

[David Parks [:handyman]]

Attachment: Bug 1759558: Ignore special keys when hiding pointer while typing on Windows r=cmartin!

Select-all, cut, copy and paste do not hide the cursor in other Windows apps (e.g. WordPad).

Comment 5

[David Parks [:handyman]]

Attachment: Bug 1759558: Enable widget.windows.hide_cursor_when_typing by default r=cmartin!

Depends on D143849

Comment 6

[David Parks [:handyman]]

(In reply to Chris Peterson [:cpeterson] from comment #3)

David, is widget.windows.hide_cursor_when_typing = true ready to ride the trains in 101?

Yeah, no reason to keep putting this off. Implemented the ctrl-key stuff and added Ctrl-X (based on experimentation with e.g. WordPad). Created bug 1765001 for the tooltips.

Comment 7

[Ray Kraesig [:rkraesig]]

(In reply to David Parks [:handyman] from comment #4)

Created attachment 9272543 [details]
Bug 1759558: Ignore Ctrl-A/X/C/V when hiding pointer while typing on Windows r=cmartin!

Select-all, cut, copy and paste do not hide the cursor in other Windows apps (e.g. WordPad).

If so, you may also want to check for Ctrl+Ins, Shift+Ins, and Ctrl+Del.

Comment 8

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/07fdec3e7cf2
Ignore special keys when hiding pointer while typing on Windows r=cmartin
https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/rev/d0b1521fa0c9
Enable widget.windows.hide_cursor_when_typing by default r=cmartin

Comment 9

[Iulian Moraru]

https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/07fdec3e7cf2
https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/d0b1521fa0c9