348398 - [mac] Double-clicking deselected tree item in background window opens previously selected item

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Core Graveyard :: Widget: Mac, defect)

Description

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Welcome aboard, Mano. Here's a Mac toolkit (tree) widget bug for you.

If you focus another app, and then click on a tree item, the first click raises the window and focuses the tree and the second click selects the item. This is different than on Windows where the fist click raises the window, focuses the item and selects it.

This user then learns that you have to click twice to select an item in the tree. But! if the user clicks twice too quickly, it's treated as a double-click on the previously selected tree item (which isn't necessarily the item they wanted to select.) 

This is painful in Thunderbird's threadpane and Firefox's bookmarks manager. 

Steps to reproduce for Bookmarks. 
1. open bookmarks manager.
2. select a bookmark.
3. focus some other application or window.
4. click on a different bookmark in the bookmarks manager. 

See that the first bookmark remains selected. 

Additional steps:
1. follow 1-3 above.
2. double-click on a different bookmark in the bookmarks manager.

See the first bookmark get loaded. 

You can experience the same problem by starting off with your selection in Thunderbird's threadpane.

The results I expect are either 1) a single click raises the window, focuses the tree widget, and selects the item I clicked on, or 2) if a second click is required, that we don't treat a rapid second click as a double-click applied to the first selected item but rather treat it as a focusing click and a selecting click on the desired (second) tree item.

Comment 1

[Simon Howes]

Seems to be a standard OS X behaviour.  Different OS X apps such as Safari and Camino do the same.

Comment 2

[David :Bienvenu]

yes, it's a mac thing, and very annoying :-) if we change it, mac people might be unhappy, though it would make me very happy.

Comment 3

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

I don't think this is some kind of required "mac thing".  It works fine in other mac apps. Take the Finder for example. When I'm in Mozilla and I click once on a tree item in Finder, it does what I want and raises the window, focuses the tree, and selects the tree item I clicked. 

Another app, Automator does do sort of what we do. The first click raises the window but leaves the previously selected tree item selected. But! they get it right and never treat the second click as a double-click no matter how fast you double-click. The second click always selects that second item.

iTunes has the Automator behavior. 

I'd prefer we follow the Finder behavior. If that's not possible, we at least have to behave like other Mac apps and not! treat the second click as a double-click. 

Comment 4

[Asaf Romano (gone)]

Not tress specific. For exmaple, we don't select a background tab if it was clicked when the window was inactive. Moving to Widget:Mac since we probably don't generate mouse events at all in this case.

Comment 5

[Mark Mentovai]

Allowing click-through to select items in a background window is WONTFIX.  We can't tell in widget if click-through would be appropriate or not unless some attribute to indicate that were added to the underlying hierarchy.  For example, we absolutely don't want click-through to open links in background windows.  If we had some way to tell whether click-through was appropriate, we could revisit this behavior.

The bug here is as described in the "additional steps" in comment 0.  Adjusting summary.

Comment 6

[Mark Mentovai]

This is low-profile enough in Firefox, but it's a real annoyance in Thunderbird.

Comment 7

[Mark Mentovai]

(because Thunderbird has a prominent list view, and this bug affects lists the same way that it affects trees.)

(and because the fix is easy and safe.)

Comment 8

[Mark Mentovai]

Attachment: v1

The bug is that double-clicks look at the time between mouse-up and mouse-down.  This patch makes us forget about the last mouse-up when a window is activated or deactivated, when a key is pressed, or when text is input.  Standard Mac behavior is to allow a keypress in the middle of a double-click sequence to cause it to be interpreted as two single clicks, that's why I added keys to the mix, while we really only need to watch activate to make this work.

(Also, I'm putting something into the dtor that belongs there, I remember there was a merge problem here and I must have put this snippet into the ctor accidentally.)

Comment 9

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Not a blocker for release, but we'd take a well baked and reviewed patch. Over to you, Mark! :)

Comment 10

[Mike Pinkerton (not reading bugmail)]

Comment on attachment 233809 [details] [diff] [review]
v1

sr=pink

Comment 11

[Mark Mentovai]

Checked in on the trunk.

Comment 12

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Comment on attachment 233809 [details] [diff] [review]
v1

a=beltzner on behalf of the 181drivers

Comment 13

[Mark Mentovai]

Checked in on MOZILLA_1_8_BRANCH before 1.8.1rc1.

Comment 14

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

*** Bug 312136 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 15

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

*** Bug 345465 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***