190878 - able to focus Subject and Date fields in header

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 165999

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Description

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

found using 2003.01.27.10 comm trunk bits on linux rh7.2. i can focus
(highlight) the Subject and Date fields in the header via the tab key.

1. view a msg either in the mail 3pane (msg pane) or the mail standalone window.
2. start hitting the tab key.

results: as expected, hitting the tab key will cycle btwn (depending on where
focus is to begin with, of course) the folder pane, the view droplist,
quicksearch field, thread pane, msg pane and links in the msg pane. however,
before reaching the msg content area, focus will go to the Subject field then
the Date, then the msg content.

this is a bit odd, since Subject and Date aren't linked content anyhow --fields
like From, To and Cc are links (email addresses), but tabbing skips over them in
this case.

seth says that this is unexpected behavior. will see if it regressed recently.

Comment 1

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

wacky, this regressed sometime btwn 2002-10-04 (works) and 2002-10-18 (broken).
sorry, don't have the intervening builds on my machine here.

Comment 2

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

aaron or jennifer, is this perchance by design?

Comment 3

[Aaron Leventhal]

It's not by design that I'm aware of.When you say vie all headers, you get
everything.

In some ways, this is useful, because without it, it's really impossible for
keyboard-only users to copy some important stuff to the clipboard. However, it
would be a total pain in the butt to have all of this in the tab order, for most
people. Wish we could think of a clever way to get the best of both worlds.

If it is intentional, then I'd say it would be good ifleft/right arrow worked to
collapse/expand the +/- tree node markers.

Comment 4

[Ninoschka Baca]

Marking nsbeta1 because this is a regression and would make it difficult for
anyone using the keyboard to navigate through messages.

Comment 5

[jglick]

I don't believe this was on purpose. 

Comment 6

[timeless]

um. ctrl-tab goes between thread pane and message pane.
and tab gets me to /almost/ everything. I really like being able to copy the
message summary, although i'd also like to be able to get the context menu for
the from and to(details) fields.

Comment 7

[Samir Gehani]

Mail triage team: nsbeta1-

Comment 8

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Duplicate is not strict, but the two bugs are in conflict.  I believe that being 
able to navigate into the envelope is a desirable feature, and that Tab is the 
obvious key to do that with -- in other words, I would WONTFIX this one in favor 
of doing something sensible with the other.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 165999 ***