329482 - Initial focus in Compose window: Message body gets focused for a split second before To field, early rapid input can end up dislocated

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

Description

[Pieter Ennes]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060227 Firefox/1.5.0.1
Build Identifier: Thunderbird 1.5 (20060207) (Gentoo Linux)

When starting to type while opening a Compose window, the initial focus will move from the body pane to the To header. This causes the text you type to be split between the body and the to header. The initial focus of the Compose window should probably be set to the To field right from the start.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Click Write.
2. Type email address quickly when window is opening.


Actual Results:  
3. Email address will be split between Body pane and To header.

Expected Results:  
3. Email address should (IMHO) end up in the To header only.

Gentoo Linux, Thunderbird 1.5 (20060207)

Comment 1

[Ray Booysen]

Confirming.

Strangely this happens in Outlook too for me.

Comment 2

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

xref bug 143669 -- possible dupe.

Comment 3

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

*** Bug 350227 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 5

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

this is a PITA.  if bug 143669 is correct, this is a regression and exists since at least 2002-05-11 (fixed 2001-04-17 in bug 62452). Unfortunately no regression range identified.

Comment 6

[Kevin Boyd]

This also happens for me (and some of my users) in Thunderbird 2.0.0.6 on Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon. Usually, the switch is fast enough so that only one character ends up in the body, but that one character is usually crucial for doing the QuickSearch in the To: field (as you can see from my work email address, the email addresses follow a specific format). Thus, it becomes a huge annoyance when the character is dropped.

Comment 8

[[:Aureliano Buendía]]

It happens also with 

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.4pre) Gecko/20100410 Lightning/1.0b2pre Lanikai/3.1b2pre ID:20100410032217

Comment 9

[Boris Toloknov]

The easiest way to reproduce the bug is to forward some message with Ctlr+L and start typing something (for example "lll" ) immediately. The chance that this happens is higher for the first "forward" after starting of thunderbird.
I have just tried to do that under Icedove ( version 2.0.0.24 (20100328) Debian Lenny ) and got all the first letters lost completely. Under Debian it happens all the time.
Just in case I confirm that the bug is still present in the latest stable Thunderbird 3.0.4 for Windows.

Comment 12

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

can't the msg body be locked out until the addressing field is focused? or focus in body not be presented at all?

ux-<something> should be probably be specified, but I'm not sure which one.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/describekeywords.cgi#ux-affordance

Comment 13

[Richard L. Whitmore]

My initial post was a little different than what Mozilla moved it to this message string. I have a problem that when you right click on the body of a message (before entering any email address), the cursor often stays in the TO: field and when you paste text, it goes into the TO: field, rather than the body of the message.

Richard.

Comment 16

[Richard L. Whitmore]

I keep getting emails stating that this bug is a duplicate. Well, when should we expect to have it fixed?

Richard.

Comment 17

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to comment #16)
> I keep getting emails stating that this bug is a duplicate. Well, when should
> we expect to have it fixed?
> 
> Richard.

in short, when someone with the skills and interest volunteers to do it, and obviously in the context of many other bugs that need fixing :)

notes:
- bugs are being marked as duplicates of this does not mean it will get greater priority. see 1.1 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html
- you can adjust your bugmail preferences at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/userprefs.cgi?tab=email - although there is no setting specific to ignoring duplicates

Comment 18

[Russ Ranshaw]

In other words, "Tough Toenails, Turkey!"

Put another way, "If you want something that works, Try Outlook Express."

Evidently the "rules" for putting bugs into Thunderbird/Firefox etc. are vastly different from the rules to get them out.  It makes we users feel truly welcome.  NOT!

Comment 19

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

I can't reproduce this bug at all, either on trunk (Linux) or 3.1 (Windows). I can make it take a second or so to open the compose window by forwarding a big message, but even if I start typing before the window appears, I don't see any characters entered in the body, only in the To: field.

Comment 20

[Cive]

I can easily reproduce it using "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; de; rv:1.9.2.15) Gecko/20110303 Thunderbird/3.1.9". I simple push the "New Message" Button and start typing immediately.

I don't know about the implementation of Thunderbird, but I'd guess that the components of the compose windows should be created in a different order to avoid this problem. Alternatively, the body text component could be configured to not receive focus until all other components are created.

Comment 21

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I've just lost a bunch of typing that I'm not going to redo. The short version is this
- it's more common than the number of dups might suggest
- it may be more likely to happen if you have compose set to HTML (which I don't normally use)
- I could only reproduce in 1/50 attempts. however, approximately 50% of the time, the first character I typed within 1 second did not appear anywhere - in body or address.

1. with compose set to HTML, and no signature specified
2. ctrl+N

Watch for the cursor, it's apparent the cursor is first in the message body, and then jumps to the addressing field.

Comment 22

[Russ Ranshaw]

The way it worked prior to version 3.* was that when "New" was selected the "New Message" page came up without any insertion cursors at all.  To me this makes sense, as there are three places on that page where text can go.

Someone in Thunderbird Support Newsgroup said that entering the To: field, then the "Subject:" field and finally the "Body" is a "natural progression".  But from what I've read in Bugzilla, and some comments in the newsgrooup, this isn't all that "natural", as it seems we all have different priorities.

Comment 23

[Richard L. Whitmore]

Well, I do use HTML without a signature line...

I often right click in the body area to make my paste (before filling in the heading). I also have found that left clicking does the same (the cursor doesn't always move. It may take four or five clicks to bring the cursor down to the body area...

Richard.

Comment 24

[Russ Ranshaw]

I just observed that while r-clicking on a newly opened Write compose area does not move the insertion cursor into that window, r-clicking on the Subject: window DOES move the insertion cursor as expected.  Likewise, once the insertion cursor is in either the Subject: or body window, r-clicking in the To: line DOES move the insertion cursor into that window.