302139 - keyboard focus for a tab very frequently goes elsewhere. ff is mouse-centric. no way to work around it?

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox :: Keyboard Navigation, defect)

Description

[t t]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050720 Firefox/1.0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050720 Firefox/1.0.6 (Debian package 1.0.6-1)

i looked for an existing bug, and nothing was quite like this.  i experience it
very frequently and do not know a way to even work around it.

it happens on a fresh profile with no extensions.

most of the time, however, i use a profile with configuration mania and tab mix.
 i also use a proxy and the connection is very slow.  fwiw.  if the connection
is faster it seems to happen less, but i don't know how important that is.  i
use kde.

if i have tabs a b c, and navigate pages using pgup pgdn spc, and navigate tabs
using ctrl-pgup ctrl-pgdn ctrl-w ctrl-r, quite frequently a PARTICULAR focused
tab will lose keyboard focus.  e.g. pgup pgdn do not work.

sometimes that focus goes to the url bar.  sometimes it goes to the tab to the
left of the tab that is showing.  i.e. if tab b is showing, and i press pgdn,
then ctrl-pgup, ff will show tab a and the contents of tab a will have scrolled
down.

it is persistent.  if i go to tab a, it will work.  if i go to tab c, it will
work.  but tab b never works.  this is true whether it is in url bar mode or
left tab mode.  either way the scrolled thing is whatever was the scrolled thing
the previous time.  and if it is focus-set-to-jupiter mode (i.e. nowhere
obvious) then that is persistent also.

it does not seem to depend on the web page.

it might depend on things taking a long time to load.  it might be a problem
with the assumptions that ff makes when it does multithreading.  or maybe not. 
it might have to do with what combination of keys is pressed, but there is no
obvious repeatability so far.  it is very frequent.

pressing f6 between once and 3 times sometimes restores keyboard focus, but
usually no number of presses of f6 fixes it.  usually the only way to fix it is
to use the mouse.

i consider this to be an accessibility problem.  not everybody can use the mouse
as frequently as ff wants users to.  therefore i consider it to be major.

i apologize for not being able to locate the problem more narrowly or fix the code.
but i wanted the bug to be notated so there is a common place to talk about it.

note that there are similar bugs, but they refer to other windows, not tabs.

thanks.

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1.  load several web pages
2.  navigate using ctrl-pgup and ctrl-pgdn
3.  scroll using pgup and pgdn
Actual Results:  
keyboard focus goes to left tab, url bar, or nowhere obvious.

Expected Results:  
as a user i expect keyboard focus to follow what's shown.  always.

no special theme.

Comment 1

[zug_treno]

(In reply to comment #0)
> sometimes that focus goes to the url bar.  sometimes it goes to the tab to the
> left of the tab that is showing.  i.e. if tab b is showing, and i press pgdn,
> then ctrl-pgup, ff will show tab a and the contents of tab a will have scrolled
> down.

Maybe related to bug 301761?

Comment 2

[Aaron Leventhal]

Do you have the option set to load a new tab in a foreground tab? Does it happen
after you open a document in a new tab?

If so then this is a dupe of bug 249136.

Comment 3

[t t]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Do you have the option set to load a new tab in a foreground tab? Does it happen
> after you open a document in a new tab?
> 
> If so then this is a dupe of bug 249136.

if you mean advanced -> "select new tabs opened from links" then that is not set.

i do use rclick->open in new tab (in bg) a lot, but i am not convinced that it
only happens when i open a bunch of tabs that way.  will update later to clarify
that point if you think it might be important.  (note: my connection is slow so
it takes time to test things but i will test whatever you want.  however, i am
not sure it will be easy for me to try a trunk build.)

(In reply to comment #1)

> (In reply to comment #0)
> > sometimes that focus goes to the url bar.  sometimes it goes to the tab to the
> > left of the tab that is showing.  i.e. if tab b is showing, and i press pgdn,
> > then ctrl-pgup, ff will show tab a and the contents of tab a will have scrolled
> > down.
> 
> Maybe related to bug 301761?

the comments contain a collection of different bug syndromes that might all be
related, but don't seem to be identical.

of course, i do not focus new tabs, so comment 0 in that bug is not identical. 
for what it's worth, i never bothered to enable my scroll wheel in X.

thanks to both of you for taking this problem seriously.

Comment 4

[Aaron Leventhal]

We take all of the keyboard navigation bugs seriously. It should show by now.

Comment 5

[t t]

opening a new tab via context does not seem to be necessary for this bug.  at
least, it occurs many actions after and many tabs away from any tab opened like
that.

however, loading e.g. by refreshing might have something to do with it.

Comment 6

[t t]

for what it's worth, i am ALSO getting the problem with a blank profile (but
bigger fonts and a proxy), with only one tab, after clicking on a conversation
in gmail.  i.e. no keyboard focus.

it has gotten so bad that i DREAD pressing pgdn because i REALLY don't want to
have to click the mouse, yet to avoid future annoyance i would have to click
every single page.

Comment 7

[Aaron Leventhal]

I do think this is related to bug 249136, even though the foreground tab option
isn't used. Same symptoms. The slow connection could be causing the new
presshell for the new tab not to be ready.

Comment 8

[Aaron Leventhal]

Several keyboard navigation fixes have just gone in. Is this bug still reproducable?

Comment 9

[Aaron Leventhal]

(In reply to comment #8)
> Several keyboard navigation fixes have just gone in. Is this bug still
reproducable?

Hello? Anyone out there?

Comment 10

[Aaron Leventhal]

Reopen if there is still a problem.

Comment 11

[t t]

(In reply to comment #9)
> (In reply to comment #8)
> > Several keyboard navigation fixes have just gone in. Is this bug still
> reproducable?
> 
> Hello? Anyone out there?

yes.  i am finding that bugzilla is a little clunky for me...

it still happens all the time.  very frequent.  basically the keyboard is
insufficient for navigation.  but i am only using 1.06.  should i assume the
fixes went into something i'd have to use cvs for and install myself?  if so, i
won't reopen the bug, because i don't know if i'll be able to do that.

Comment 12

[Aaron Leventhal]

(In reply to comment #11)
> (In reply to comment #9)

Oy, why didn't I look at your user agent string in the first place! :)

The code in Firefox 1.06 is about 2 years out of date compared to what will be
going into Firefox 1.5. There have been a ton of keyboard fixes. We're still
working on focus issues, but I suggest you remain patient until Firefox 1.5
comes out.