1886981 - Items in the middle of the page are selectable with a mouse click but not with the Tab key.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1036966

(Firefox :: New Tab Page, defect, P3)

Description

[fzxcvqwerasd]

Attachment: vedio

Affected Version:

• Firefox 123.0.1 (64-bit)

Affected Platforms:

• MacOS 14.1 (23B2073)

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Launch Firefox
2. Press the Tab key to select an item in the center of the main Firefox page.

Actual Results:

• Using the Tab key does not select the item; it only selects the edit button in the top right corner of the item, preventing keyboard navigation to the page.

Expected Results:

• The Tab key should allow selection of the item to facilitate page navigation via the keyboard.

Comment 1

[Chris Bellini (:cbellini)]

This appears to only affect macOS such that tabbing only navigates to the "..." menu of each tile, and never the tiles itself. This doesn't appear to affect Windows. Also moving this over to the New Tab Page component.

Comment 2

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

Managed to reproduce this issue on:

• Firefox Nightly 126.0a1;
• Firefox 125.0b5;
• Firefox 124.0.1;

Tested and reproduced on:

• macOS 12;

Setting as NEW.

Comment 3

[Anna Yeddi [:ayeddi]]

Sadly, this is likely the default behavior that the macOS is providing. By default, it's Text boxes and lists only that are receiving keyboard focus.

There are two preferences that would affect the behavior of a keyboard navigation on macOS: the system-wide All controls and the Firefox setting Use the tab key to move focus between form controls and links - they both need to be checked for Tab key to be able to navigate anywhere besides the (largely) text inputs while on macOS:

1. "All controls" setting in macOS system prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts should be allowed.
2. In Firefox, when the Use the tab key to move focus between form controls and links is checked in the Settings (about:preferences#general > Browsing), Firefox does overwrite this behavior and allows users to navigate to interactive elements in content, as it is usually expected. Similar setting exists in Safari and Chrome too. Making it "on" in Firefox by default is tracked in bug 1036966.
   1. Alternatively, you could change this pref in about:configuration: type in accessibility.tabfocus and change the value from 0 to 7 (more options)

:fzxcvqwerasd or/and :Ardelean, could you check what are the current state of the macOS keyboard pref and the Firefox keyboard pref on your machines, so we could debug it? Thank you in advance!

Setting it up as access-S3, in the meantime, but if the issue is confirmed with both keyboard access settings enabled, it should be upgraded to access-S2.

Comment 4

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

Re-tested Firefox Nightly 127.0a1 and Firefox Beta 126.0b4 with the following scenarios:

• With both preferences disabled, issue is easily reproducible.
• With ‘’Use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls’ enabled and ‘Use the tab key to move focus between form controls and links’ disabled, issue is easily reproducible.
• With ‘Use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls’ disabled and ‘Use the tab key to move focus between form controls and links’ enabled, issue is not reproducible anymore.
• With both preferences enabled, issue is not reproducible anymore.

I hope this is helpful. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help.