256255 - Hitting space in an HTML form won't check check box (when ActiveWords is installed)

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(Toolkit :: Form Manager, defect)

Description

[Joost Schuur]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040803 Firefox/0.9.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040803 Firefox/0.9.3

When I'm tabbing through HTML form elements, hitting space won't toggle a check
box status when such an input element is focused. A checkmark will briefly flash
up, but it immediately dissapears again.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Find web page with form that has a checkbox
2. Tab until you get to the checkbox
3. Hit space, watch checkbox not select.

Actual Results:  
Checkbox remains unchecked.

Expected Results:  
Selected checkbox.

Occurs on 3 different machines (Windows XP Pro), regardless of theme. Even
happens in the form for this bug submission (the 'Security' check box)

Comment 1

[José Jeria]

WFM: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040819
Firefox/0.9.1+

Comment 2

[Jesse Ruderman]

WFM Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040818
Firefox/0.9.1+

Comment 3

[Jesse Ruderman]

WFM using 0.9.3 too (on WinXP).

Comment 4

[Joost Schuur]

Upon Jesse's suggestion I installed the latest nightly branch build (Mozilla/5.0
(Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040819 Firefox/0.9.1+)
into a new directory and encountered the same problem. I also launched it into
safe mode with the same results, and specifically created a new profile
(firefox.exe -P) with the same results.

I was able to narrow the problem down a little bit though: If you keep the space
bar pressed, the checkbox will start to quickly switch between checked and
unchecked and if you let go after at least 2 toggles (unchecked to checked,
checked to unchecked), it will successfully remain on whatever option was
selected when you let go of the space bar.

It toggled through pretty fast for me (5-10 times a second), so the results were
more or less random between checked and unchecked.

I then experimented with the repeat delay and rate from the Windows Control
panel item to see if that made a difference, but it did not (I had been using
default values for that before).

Incidentally, I can select radio buttons just fine with a space.

Comment 5

[Jesse Ruderman]

> If you keep the space bar pressed, the checkbox will start to quickly switch 
> between checked and unchecked...

Interesting.  That does not happen for me.  It seems like checkboxes are
toggling both onkeydown and onkeypress (which includes repeats) for you.  When
you first press the spacebar down, both events fire, which would explain why a
checkmark flashes briefly.

Comment 6

[Joost Schuur]

I've gotten to the bottom of the cause. This seems to happen when I run
ActiveWords, a keyboard macro app (activewords.com), which I happen to run on
all three test machine.

After deactivating ActiveWords, hitting space works fine to toggle a check box
right away.

Comment 7

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

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Comment 8

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.