253228 - Switching tabs does not always switch focus

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[Julian Hall]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040707 Firefox/0.9.2
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040707 Firefox/0.9.2

I can't believe nobody's reported this, but I've had a long search through the
bugs and can't find it.

When you switch tabs, either by clicking on a different tab or pressing
control+PageUp/PageDown or control+tab/control+shift+tab, the input focus
remains with the last open tab, meaning that if you want to use the keyboard to
(e.g.) scroll through the page displayed, you must first click on the firefox
window to focus the current tab.

In fact, you can continue filling out form elements in the old tab.  I'm writing
this paragraph while looking at an entirely different web site.

But, this doesn't _always_ happen -- for instance, whenever I switch back to the
tab I have this form open in, it always sets the focus correctly.  In fact, of
the tabs I have open, all but one of them is now working correctly, although
when I started writing this bug only this one was, so the problem seems transient.

Reproducible: Sometimes
Steps to Reproduce:
1.  Open two different sites in two tabs.  Pages without form fields seem to be
the worst.
2.  Switch between tabs using the keyboard interface
3.  Use the up & down keys to try to scroll the window

Actual Results:  
The content of the tab that was open before step 2 scrolls

Expected Results:  
The content of the tab open after step 2 should scroll

Comment 1

[Tracy Walker [:tracy]]

I've found that pages with form fields are more likely to exhibit this. 
In that case:

-Open in a new tab a page with form fields(bugs are good). 
-Put focus in a form field. This will prevent pageup/pagedown from working at
that page.
-Switch to another tab with keyboard short cuts or clicking.
-Then return to the tab with the form. Focus will still be in the form field, as
expected.  This will prevent pageup/pagedown from working.
-Take focus from the form field by click on black space in the page.
pageup/pagedown works.
-Again, switch away, then back to the tab with the form fields. pageup/pagedown
still works.

all of this is expected behavior. marking invalid.  

Comment 2

[Julian Hall]

Are you sure that's expected behaviour?  It's very counterintuitive, and makes
using firefox with keyboard only very difficult.  I believe that it should be
changed, so that the focus always follows the currently active tab, whether or
not there are form fields active in the tab you switched from.

Comment 3

[David Balažic]

I saw this too.
Multiple tabs.
Pressing PgUp/PgDwn scrolls the non-visible tab, instead if the visible one.
This not expected beavior by any twist of logic :-(