254402 - backspace deletes previous address also, without pausing (when deleting characters from an address To: or similar)

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 170292

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

Description

[Andrei Boros]

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

Backspace key deletes characters from an email address and after deleting the
first one, it promptly jumps to the previous email address in the list (assuming
more then one address in the list).

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.write 2 or more recipient addresses in the composition window.
2.start deleting characters from the last email entered, using backspace
3.

Actual Results:  
when backspace arrives at the first character in the email address, it deletes
the To: (or similar) field that contained it and jumps to the previous line,
continuing to delete characters. 


Expected Results:  
Backspace should stop after deleting the first character in the current address
field, the same way as Delete key does after deleting the last character in the
current address field.



This behaviour is much more annoying because more often I accidentally start
deleting from the previous address as well, something that is NOT WANTED. 
Assume that my keyboard is running at 30cps (I like the better response time due
to this setting), so when I delete an address, I often end up deleting from the
previous as well. 

My strong suggestion is to make backspace stop at the beginning of the line,
just as Delete stops at the end of the line.

If this is an intended feature, that is really wanted by some people, I suggest
the following variant : 
backspace should delete the current field and jump upwards to the previous after
a delay (something like 0.75sec) that will allow the user to observe and react
to the fact that _this address_ has been deleted and decide and make sure
wheather he/she wants to continue.
However, conceptually, Delete key can't really get a similar behaviour (to be
consistent), as text can't jump from the field below, so I suggest backspace stops.

A click outside an empty field, or an up arrow should be triggers to delete the
empty field, or rather, a click or tab navigation to an unrelated control (like
the menu bar or the subject field.

This same/identical bug has been reported around an year ago for Mozilla mail
client component, IMO still unsolved there.

Comment 1

[Tom Hessman]

I also see this behavior in Windows 98, but not when I tested it with a Mac build.

Build ID: version 0.7+ (20040804)

Comment 2

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 170292 ***