289632 - Caret browsing halts keyboard focus on javascript links

Status: NEW

(Core :: DOM: UI Events & Focus Handling, defect)

Description

[Frank Fridlund]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050317 Firefox/1.0.2
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050317 Firefox/1.0.2

When in caret mode, the caret cursor will stop movement when it lands on links
with javascript in it.  Once the cursor lands on this link, almost all other
keyboard control is lost, including the ability to turn off the caret mode. 
Only the Alt keys and the Ctrl-Tab keys will work (but there may be a delay of a
second or two).

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to above test page.
2. Hit F7 to turn on caret mode
3. Hit down repeatedly as you go down the page, making sure that the cursor
lands in the middle of one of the 4 links (All OS, Windows, Linux, Mac OS X.)
4. Hit down, or any key combination (even Alt-D)

Actual Results:  
The keyboard is essentially locked up, with the exception of either the Alt key,
or the Ctrl-Tab keys.  

Expected Results:  
Move the cursor down, or up, or do whatever key combination was pressed.

Since caret mode in one tab is independant of another, the only workaround would
be to click any non-link place (text or blank space) before turning off the
caret mode.  This could also be an accessibility issue.

I can also confirm this on Firefox 1.0.1 using Win98.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Confirm on current builds of suite and FF Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT
5.1; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050526 Firefox/1.0+

clarifying reproduction
1. Go to http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/keyboard
2. Hit F7 to turn on caret mode
2a. click between the r and t of "Show shortcuts for"
3. Hitting down arrow puts caret in the middle of "All Operating Systems"
4. caret is stuck and no mozilla key combos work

HOWEVER, it is not necessary to be in caret mode for the caret to get stuck on
http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/keyboard - tabbing to "All Operating
Systems" also gets stuck.

Note - the text of this page does not render correctly/reliabily starting at
"Notes for Mac OS X users"

Reminder - if this is in fact a caret bug then it should be set to block bug 241023.

Comment 2

[Mark Pilgrim (inactive)]

Confirmed on Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20060301 Firefox/1.6a1 - both caret browsing and regular tabbing get stuck on the "All operating systems" JavaScript link.

The problem appears to be the following attribute on the <a> element:

onkeypress="setActiveStyleSheet('allkeys'); return false;"

Comment 3

[Ginn Chen]

Change to
onkeypress="setActiveStyleSheet('allkeys'); return true;"
can solve this problem.

I think it should not be fixed inside Gecko.

Comment 4

[Mark Pilgrim (inactive)]

I disagree strongly.  Remote web authors should not be able to break a vital accessibility feature running on my local machine -- innocently or maliciously.  

Comment 5

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1527381