18613 - Mnemonic/access keys should be provided to all pull-down menu items

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(Core :: DOM: UI Events & Focus Handling, defect, P3)

Description

[xiaotong]

Not all menu items have mnemonic/shortcut keys. This is opened to address
accessibility issue according to W3C accessibility guidelines.

Comment 1

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

spam: reassigning QA contact to self. also added german and mcafee to cc list
--should there be shortcuts for ALL menu items? perhaps this should be marked
RFE...?

Comment 2

[xiaotong]

W3C guideline requires mnemonic keys in all menu times and shortcut keys for
most frequently used actions. I have worked on putting mnemonic keys to all menu
items and shortcut keys to some frequently used menu items. I have sent David
Hyatt the files, hopefully this will be checked in soon.

Comment 3

[leger]

Reassigning to shuang....who handles this?

Comment 4

[shuang (gone)]

reassign to lake. Lake, please work with German to see who is the engineer that 
will commit the work. 

Comment 5

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

while i don't think should be labelled as dogfood or for beta1 [at this point],
the fact that not all menu items have mnemonics is a blocker from a QA pov. let
me know why if anyone thinks otherwise...

Comment 6

[leger]

Moving all UE/UI bugs to new component: User Interface: Design Feedback
UE/UI component will be deleted.

Comment 7

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

this shouldn't be in UI: DF, IMO. It's definitely a beta2 blocker if nsbeta2 is 
feature-complete. Nominating as that.

Gerv

Comment 8

[Matthew T (active 1999-2002)]

Makes sense to me. --> XPToolkit: Menus.

Comment 9

[Marko Macek]

Shouldn't this be XP?

Comment 10

[Lakespur Roca]

Adding Jennifer to cc list she is working on the Accelerators spec.

Comment 11

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

it'd be XP on windows and linux for menus off of the main menu bar. it'd be XP
for windows, linux and mac, if these go into the context menu as well. marking
this all/all.

note: check out bug 22515 to follow the threads concerning menu access/keyboard
shortcut implementation on linux...

Comment 12

[Peter Trudelle]

[nsbeta2-]

Comment 13

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

*spam*: transferring current XP Menu bugs over to jrgm, the new component owner.
feel free to add me to the cc list (unless am the Reporter) of any of these, if
you have any questions/etc.

Comment 14

[Lakespur Roca]

Nominating for beta 3 - pollish

Comment 15

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

akkana, here's the bug i was talking about yesterday.

xiaotong or hyatt, could you please attach those files to this bug as patches? 
then we can get the reviewed and approved for checkin. thx!

Comment 16

[hangas]

Marking nsbeta3- while lake has this bug.

Comment 17

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

would be good to get this in for RTM. but, alas, the patch has not been 
attached. yet? (and, back to me. :)

Comment 18

[timeless]

Could we have a + now so that this stuff can be checked in?

jglick: i'm sorry to hear that the w3 is so demanding, how's the spec going?
Hixie: did the w3 really ask for this?

Comment 19

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

ian, see timeless' comment above. :)

Comment 20

[Lakespur Roca]

About the W3C, yes this is a priority 1 guideline for them. They simply require 
that all functionality avaliable to a mouse be avaliable in some manner from the 
keyboard. The Menus are in some cases the only mouse method of acessing the 
functionality and in others there may be other mouse ways to access the 
functionality though there still is no way to access this functionality by the 
keyboard. Further, thier reasining is that the menus have been a good means of 
informing the user of the avaliable functionality and they serve as reminders to 
the key strokes necessary to access the functionality as well.

They did this so that devices with out mouse cabability and people who are not 
able to use a mouse or are reluctant to use a mouse will have a viable option. 
Additionally it has been found in studies that keyboard access with a little 
proctice is quicker than using the mouse.

Comment 21

[Akkana Peck]

As a workaround, you can always use the arrow keys to navigate menus via
keyboard (e.g. do alt-F to bring up the File menu, then use downarrow to go
through the choices in that menu), so it's not really mouse only when the
mnemonics are missing.  Though I'm not disagreeing that direct mnemonics are
quicker and would be a good thing to have.

Comment 22

[timeless]

The reason i asked was basically what Akkana said, you can use the arrow keys 
to navigate menus. This might not be the case on macos w/ native menus but 
then,.. you can't use keys anyways so there's no big deal :)

Also I should check, but i thought that in the old win32 world if a menu item 
had no access key and its first letter was unassigned typing that letter would 
activate that item (assuming that menu was active). I can't find an example of 
this now (everything has accesskeys :o)

Comment 23

[jglick]

I'm looking through all the menus for Navigator, Mail, AB, Composer, Mail 
Compose, and I'm see a fair amount of mnemonics missing.  

1. Is this a global bug to fix ALL the currently missing mnemonics?  
2. Has someone already done the work to fix this (and just waiting to get it 
approved)?
3. How is this different from all the individual bugs that MailNews already has 
for making the menus accurate and mnemonics complete?
4. It looks like some of the problems are some shared menus, such has View --> 
Character Coding (no mnemonics at all).  Is this a NS only item?
5. Actually it appears a lot of the missing mnemonics are NS only items. Sigh...

Comment 24

[Karl Ove Hufthammer]

> 4. It looks like some of the problems are some shared
> menus, such has View --> Character Coding (no mnemonics
> at all).  Is this a NS only item?

No, it's a Moz bug.

Comment 25

[(not reading, please use [e-mail] instead)]

not going to happen for NS 6.0 rtm.

Comment 26

[Chris McAfee]

nsbeta1

Comment 27

[Chris McAfee]

nsbeta1-, we should nominate specific bugs.

Comment 28

[jglick]

can this be closed and individual bugs filed for the remaining issues?

Comment 29

[timeless]

*shrug* i think i actually have a patch numbered against this bug.

Comment 30

[Aaron Leventhal]

Timeless, I don't understand your last comment. Can you explain why this is
still open? Do you have a patch that you plan to submit?

Comment 31

[timeless]

hm, i'll put my patches in bug 87792 or some other relative.

Comment 32

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

rubberstamp.