277651 - Wrong behaviour while navigating through a listbox using alphabet keys

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: Keyboard Navigation, defect)

Description

[Rafal Peisert]

When navigating a listbox on a web page one can press a letter to skip to the
first position beginning with that letter. The problem is that it's impossible
to skip to another position pressing another letter, one has to press up/down
arrow to 'unlock' the listbox first. For example, if you press 'A', the
selection bar jumps to the first position beginning with 'A' but if you then
press 'B' nothing happens - and you even cannot anymore use 'A' to browse
through the positions starting with 'A'; when you press a cursor key, the
listbox starts reacting to letter/number keys.

Comment 1

[J.K.Umeboshi]

I thing this is not a bug, but the wanted behavior.

The list control should react like this to keys:
It just search the word you are typing; the control has a timeout (I think about
2 seconds), so if you type "ab" the first word beginning with "ab" should be
selected. If this word doesn't exists, then the first word beginning with "a"
would be selected.
If you type "a", then you wait about 2 seconds to let expire the control's
timeout, then you press "b", the first word beginning with "b" should be selected.
Changing manually (using mouse or up/down keys) the current selected item should
reset the timeout too.

This is the standard behavior of a lots of applications (system Microsoft
Windows controls and so most W32 applciations)

Comment 2

[Rafal Peisert]

I used to consider the behaviour you described as standard to comboboxes, but it
might just be that Internet Exploiter's behaviour is wrong. I also checked in
Opera and it behaves similarly to Firefox, so it's probably not a bug after all.
Thanks for the information.