373170 - No focus cue for Aqua submit/reset buttons w/o browser.display.focus_ring_on_anything=true

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 264146

(Camino Graveyard :: Accessibility, defect)

Description

[Amir Caspi]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.0.10) Gecko/20070228 Camino/1.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.0.10) Gecko/20070228 Camino/1.0.4

When tabbing around form input fields, there is a visual focus cue for all form input elements except for standard submit/reset buttons, unless browser.display.focus_ring_on_anything=true.  This makes for an inconsistent user experience with Camino and is also inconsistent with the way Firefox, Mozilla, and even Netscape handle visual focus cues for form elements.

When browser.display.focus_ring_on_anything=false, most form elements still have (subtle) visual focus cues.  For example, input=text and textarea elements show the cursor when focused; radio buttons, checkboxes, and 1-line select boxes (a.k.a. pop-up menus) show a blue shadow highlight; multi-line select boxes show a dotted focus ring around the active selected entry.  BUT, standard submit/reset buttons (that use the standard Aqua button) receive no highlight and no focus ring - there is no visual cue that these elements are focused.  Submit/reset buttons that use custom images (instead of the standard button) DO show a dotted focus ring even when browser.display.focus_ring_on_anything=false.

This is an inconsistent user experience.  The standard Aqua submit/reset buttons should show a blue shadow highlight, just like radio buttons and checkboxes do.

Note that Firefox, Mozilla, and Netscape (which use older, non-Aqua styles for form elements) DO show a dotted focus ring on standard submit/reset buttons, even when browser.display.focus_ring_on_anything=false... this has always been the case and is necessary since otherwise there is no visual focus cue for buttons.  Camino is therefore inconsistent not only with its own behavior, but also with the behavior of these other Gecko-based browsers.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to a page with multiple form elements (e.g. http://cgi-lib.berkeley.edu/ex/simple-form.html).
2. Set browser.display.focus_ring_on_anything=false.
3. Tab around to various form elements and notice the visual focus cues...
Actual Results:  
Standard submit/reset buttons (i.e. ones that use the standard Aqua button look, not a custom image) do not show ANY visual focus cue when browser.display.focus_ring_on_anything=false... no highlight, no focus ring.  Buttons which ARE custom images show a dotted focus ring even when browser.display.focus_ring_on_anything=false (as expected).

Expected Results:  
Submit/reset buttons using the standard Aqua button format should show a blue shadow highlight, to be consistent with the visual focus cue for radio buttons, checkboxes, and one-line select boxes.

Alternatively, standard submit/reset buttons should show a dotted focus ring, the same as custom-image buttons do... the same as in Firefox, Mozilla, and Netscape.

Currently, the only workaround for this is to set browser.display.focus_ring_on_anything=true.  However, this is visually unappealing... it makes input=text and textarea elements look garrish and obtrusive, and is generally unnecessary because there are other visual focus cues already present (as described above).  Furthermore, the current behavior is inconsistent with those visual cues - since Aqua-styled radio buttons and checkboxes show a blue shadow highlight when focused (even when browser.display.focus_ring_on_anything=false), the Aqua-styled submit/reset buttons should show a similar blue shadow highlight, as well.

Without browser.display.focus_ring_on_anything=true, there is NO WAY to know which button currently has focus, severely complicating keyboard navigation of web forms.  One either has to KNOW which button is active (by inferring from the last known focused form element) or use the mouse... or set browser.display.focus_ring_on_anything=true.  All of these alternatives are non-ideal, so really, the buttons should display the same blue shadow highlight as other Aqua form elements.

Comment 1

[philippe (part-time)]

This works correctly on 10.4. Are you running an older OS (10.3.x or 10.2.x) ?

Comment 2

[Stuart Morgan]

Yeah, this is a dupe of bug 264146, which we could only fix for 10.4+.

Comment 3

[Amir Caspi]

Yes, I am on 10.3.9.  This bug isn't fixable for 10.3.x?

(I searched for this before submission, guess I didn't find the original bug.  My apologies.)