372144 - Key held down in Flash text field doesn't repeat in Firefox 2.0

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: Keyboard Navigation, defect)

Description

[Michelle Sintov]

This bug is new with Firefox 2.0. This doesn't happen with Firefox 1.5.

This bug can be reproduced on either Mac PPC or Intel.

With Firefox 1.5 and prior, when a keyboard key is held down, the Flash Player receives multiple autoKey events and then one keyUp event. Now, with Firefox 2.0, when a key is held down only a single keyDown and keyUp event is sent to the plug-in; no autoKey event is sent.

Reproduction:
1. Open up a SWF with a text field, such as http://www.templatesoft.com
2. Click on the text field
3. Hold down any key

Actual Results: Key only is input one time

Expected Results: Key should auto-repeat.

Workaround: Hit key multiple times

Comment 1

[Michelle Sintov]

Note comment from Mark here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=339346#c12
"Because of other architectural changes, the Flash plugin doesn't get
autoKey events.  It might be best if the Flash player did all of its text input
on its TSM handler instead of taking keyDown events.  keyDown events are for
raw keyboard activity, and as you've seen, it's possible to get keyDown events
that have nothing to do with the text the user is entering when an input
session is active."

My thoughts on this.... First of all, even if the Flash Player were to change over to using the TSM handler for keyboard interaction, this would only be in effect for Flash Players of some new version and higher. All of the Flash Players already shipped won't have this improvement.

Secondly, using the TSMDocumentId has been fraught with peril for us (as you can see in bug 318139), so we would really want to be convinced this is the right way to go.

3rdly, I would think that such a change in keyboard handling should go through an official process (like the plug-in futures list) instead of being modified in a bug, no? Is Flash the only plug-in that takes keyboard events? Should we not be receiving these events through NPP_HandleEvent? Forgive me if the TSM handler would be picked up through NPP_HandleEvent's keyDown event (as I haven't at all investigated it yet).

Lastly, does it make sense for Mozilla to require a different way of keyboard handling than Safari and potentially other Mac plug-ins?

Let's see if we can find a solution to this. Thanks.

Comment 2

[Michelle Sintov]

This bug was likely caused by the fixes for https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=339346

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

dupe of bug 345010?

Comment 4

[Michelle Funches - QA]

Reproducible:
Version 	46.0.1
Build ID 	20160502172042
 User Agent 	Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.11; rv:46.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/46.0

Comment 5

[u597032]

Flash is no longer supported