344269 - Status bar icons not exposed

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Disability Access, defect)

Description

[Dan Kinnunen]

Env: Bon Echo 20060707, Window Eyes 5.5k

Problem: System Tray Add-Ons Not Speaking with System Tray Hot Key 

Steps to recreate:
1. Launch WE
2. Launch Firefox
3. Install an extension (such as Forecast Fox), and set it up so that additional items (such forecast labels) show up in the status bar.
4. Press the status bar hot key

Expect Results: 
Window-Eyes should be able to pick up all the text on the status bar.

Current Results:
Only some items are heard when the status bar hot key is pressed.

Comments:
I also have HTML Validator installed, and it adds an error/warning indicator that does get announced when using the status bar hot key. Also, when there's so much text on the status bar that the page URL gets truncated, the status bar hot key reads the truncated text rather than all the text (i.e. "htt" rather than "http://blah.blah.blah"). If I set up a user window around the whole status bar, then everything, including the forecasts, is spoken. Oddly enough, the forecasts are spoken before the rest of the status line text, even though they're positioned at the end of the status bar.

Comment 1

[Aaron Leventhal]

What's the minimize-to-tray mechanism used by extensions? Is it always the same? Has a tooltip or window name been set for the HWND? Looking for help here from some extension authors who use minimize to tray.

Comment 2

[Simon Bünzli]

Currently extensions providing minimize-to-tray have to include a compiled/platform-specific component to achieve their goal. While it is being considered including into Toolkit (see bug 325353), it hasn't been done yet. This bug is thus probably INVALID and should be filed against the individual extensions.

OTOH if Dan doesn't mean the system tray (AKA notification area) but Firefox' status bar then this might either be an issue about how ForecastFox displays its information or in fact that we currently miss/don't expose a few XUL attributes to screen readers.

Comment 3

[Mark Pilgrim (inactive)]

This bug comes from a report in the WindowEyes bug database (not publicly available, sorry).  The original bug report makes it clear that this is about the Firefox status bar, not the global system tray.

Comment 4

[Aaron Leventhal]

This has to be a bug in Window-Eyes, because those items are in the accessible tree according to accexplore.exe. Please update the appropriate Window-Eyes bug.

Comment 5

[Wayne DeAngelo]

Update, reopening this defect since this problem both a FF2 and Window Eyes. Making it clear this problem is only for status bar icons that have tooltiptext?

Comment 6

[Aaron Leventhal]

Using DOM Inspector in particular I see that Forecastfox uses a custom widget called ffpanel on the status bar.

However, I also notice that the standard statusbarpanel widget allows for a statusbarpanel icon, which is redundant information with the text that's there. It doesn't provide additional info.

I'll need a good example other than forecastfox.

Comment 7

[Aaron Leventhal]

This isn't going to make Firefox 2.