243124 - Accessibility: Focus Search Messages window on first input field

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Jay Levitt]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
Build Identifier: version 0.6b (20040427)

When you press Ctrl-shift-F to search messages, the focus is initially 
invisible, before the first field in the tab order.  To do the most common 
task - search for a subject - you have to press TAB nine times.

The focus should initially be in the input field.  This is "minor" for mouse 
users, probably "normal" or even "major" for accessibility.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Dave Hooton]

(In reply to comment #0)

Agree focus should be on first input field, but OK with a mouse. Not sure this
is a bug though (T'bird 0.8, Win98SE)

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

confirmed

Comment 3

[Ain Tohvri]

Confirmed on Win32 Thunderbird version 3 alpha 1 (20060313)

Comment 4

[Ain Tohvri]

Confirmed on Win32 Tbird version 3 alpha 1 (20060314)

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Aaron, is this a valid accessibility issue?

Comment 6

[Aaron Leventhal]

(In reply to comment #5)
> Aaron, is this a valid accessibility issue?

Yes it is, the focus should not be on the <window> or <dialog> itself, which is where it is. It should go to the first control. Usually you'd get that behavior for free in a dialog, not sure why you aren't.

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Reporter asking, in this case, to focus the input field rather than first control. 
This makes sense to me.

(Seamonkey trunk has same problem)

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Also see oldie Bug 68891 - no concensus or PTB decision was reached.

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

*** Bug 324282 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[James Teh [:Jamie]]

In Thunderbird version 2 alpha 1 (20060529), not only is the first field not focused, but once I am focused (by clicking on a field or pressing one of the keyboard shortcuts such as alt+o), tab/shift+tab still does not work. The description of this bug suggests that tabbing nine times will set focus, but it never does here.

Comment 11

[James Teh [:Jamie]]

Sorry for the spam, but I just tested this on version 3 alpha 1 (20060530) and while this bug still applies (focus not being set), tab and shift+tab work correctly. Therefore, the tab/shift+tab problem must only apply to the Thunderbird 2 branch and is a different bug.

Comment 12

[David Bolter [:davidb] (NeedInfo me for attention)]

Confirming with a recent trunk build. This bug is starting to rot.

Aaron do you agree with the original report, that focus should start in the first input field?

Comment 13

[Aaron Leventhal]

Initial focus in a dialog should always be somewhere, not on the dialog itself.
In a tabbed dialog, focus should start on the first control in the selected tab.
In all other dialogs, focus should just start on the first control.

I've asked Aaron Anderson to clarify this in the XUL a11y guidelines as well: http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/XUL_accessibility_guidelines

Comment 14

[David Bolter [:davidb] (NeedInfo me for attention)]

Thanks Aaron, that makes sense to me and I agree. I imagine sometimes we would want to focus a specific (e.g. most often first used) control. Hopefully AaronAndy can consider this in the guidelines too.

Comment 15

[Aaron Leventhal]

Yes, we can put some kind of "unless there's a good reason not to" text.

Comment 16

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Attachment: Screenshot of proposed fix: search msgs dialogue should initially have focus on first input

Bryan, could you spare 30 seconds UI-review for this 6yr-old bug that is probably just one line to fix?

Comment 17

[Bryan Clark (DevTools PM) [:clarkbw]]

Comment on attachment 450397 [details]
Screenshot of proposed fix: search msgs dialogue should initially have focus on first input

Thanks for the screenshot.

Assuming focus on the first textentry instead of the first control is not an accessibility issue then the textentry makes the most sense to me.

Comment 18

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

Thomas, ping for a patch ....

Comment 19

[Thomas Szteliga]

Please! :-) Search Messages is the only way to do a quick recursive search in all folders and have the results like in the Quick Filter, because the results of a "full search" [Ctrl+K] are unreadable/ugly.
Doing recursive searches (instead of using Quick Filter [Ctrl+Shift+K] is the only way to find a message in a quick way when using message archiving, when old messages are already in Archive->Year and no longer in the Inbox.