1820607 - With focus on quick filter bar or other subordinate UI elements, F6 and Shift+F6 keyboard shortcuts jump back to first/last element of fast focus ring instead of next/previous main stop in tab order

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Thunderbird :: Folder and Message Lists, defect, P2)

Description

[Peter Vágner]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/112.0

Steps to reproduce:

• Open thunderbird and
• Navigate to the folder tree by pressing tab / shift+tab or F6 / shift+F6
• Now press tab key to move the focus to one of the filter toolbar buttons e.g. view only unread messages or view starred messages.
• Now try to use F6 to move to the message list.

Or another.

• With the filter hidden press ctrl+shift+k
• Type in your filter, notice how the list filters.
• Now press F6 to jump to the message list.

Actual results:

Sometimes either F6 or shift+F6 is stuck and I need to use the other shortcut to navigate in the opposite direction.
e.g. when focus is in a filter text entry F6 does nothing and shift+F6 navigates to the message list. I may be mistaken but I'd expect F6 to move the focus to the message list and shift+F6 to move the focus into the folder tree as the filter is in the middle of the tab order when using the tab key to navigate from the folder tree to the message list.

When the focus is inside a search field shift+F6 does nothing and F6 moves focus to the folder tree.

Expected results:

I think F6 and shift+F6 should cycle F6 forward shift+F6 backward and none of them should get stuck.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Peter, Thanks for reporting.
This still fails?

Comment 2

[Peter Vágner]

Yes, this has not changed since I have reported the bug. I'm currently testing with thunderbird 113.0a1 20230317.
To better explain the situation when repeatedly presssing either F6 or shift+F6 I expect to be able to return where I have started and cycle that way. Also it should be working while the buttons have focus.

Comment 3

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Tested on 113.0a1 (2023-03-19) (64-bit), Win10.
I do not see F6 nor Shift+F6 ever getting stuck.

However, with focus on quick filter bar or other subordinate UI elements (column headers, use Tab to focus those), F6 and Shift+F6 keyboard shortcuts always go back to first/last element of fast focus ring (Spaces toolbar / message pane) instead of next/previous main stop in the tab order of UI elements. I would agree with reporter that not jumping out of the tab order of things is probably preferred and more useful behaviour for [Shift+]F6. We didn't have so many tab stops in 102 (and we still want to reduce them toolbar-style for Supernova), but essentially we have the same problem in 102, only it's more exposed now.

Comment 4

[Peter Vágner]

Hello,
Being stuck I mean nothing happens when pressing F6.
For example steps like this:

• Launch thunderbird and highlight a message in the list of messages.
• Press shift+tab several times focusing one of the sorting toolbar buttons such as date.
• Press F6 and notice nothing happens.
• The same goes when selecting a message and pressing F6. It does not change the focus and I have to use shift+F6 to move in an opposite direction. In other words I can no longer move from the message list to the folder tree by pressing F6, I have to use shift+F6.

I think these shortcuts should work everywhere on the main window.

Comment 5

[Geoff Lankow (:darktrojan)]

Attachment: Bug 1820607 - Include more items when considering which element F6 should focus. r=#thunderbird-front-end-reviewers

Comment 6

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by [e-mail]:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/rev/094fdc75ca92
Include more items when considering which element F6 should focus. r=aleca