364819 - Adding address from Contacts Sidebar forces focus to addressing widget

Status: NEW

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

Description

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

All versions.
Simple enough: any command action taken to add an address from the Contacts Sidebar -- clicking on an Add button, or double-clicking on an address -- forces the focus to the next address field in the addressing widget.  This isn't a problem if you're using the mouse, but bug 364229 is working on better keyboard accessibility for the contacts sidebar.  In that case, every time a new address is added, the user needs to shift focus back to the sidebar.

Interestingly, dragging an address from the sidebar to the widget leaves the focus in the sidebar -- but of course, that's not accessible.

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

what is the better or more desired workflow from an accessibility standpoint?

Comment 2

[David Bolter [:davidb] (NeedInfo me for attention)]

Good question. I don't recall using this sidebar before looking at this bug. The first thing I tried when arrowing down the contact list was to add a contact to the 'to:' field by hitting [enter], which didn't work; then tried [spacebar], which didn't work either.

I can only offer my 'gut' on this one... and that's if you are adding contacts via a keyboard based interaction, leave focus in the sidebar contact list. I'm not sure of the desired workflow for users of the sidebar though. I had a quick google for existing similar ui patterns but there is almost no mention of keyboard Ux.

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

fwiw, the predecessor to sidebar is "select addresses dialog".  sidebar's design point is indeed quite mouse-centric. two of the more useful methods of interaction being 
- double click contact
- select one or multi-select, then click a button

other interesting behaviors are bug 271917 and bug 343973

Comment 4

[buovjaga]

Still repro.

Thunderbird 52.1.1 (32-bit)
Windows 7 64-bit