392580 - Keyboard grab on linux while a menu/panel is open (for example: starring/bookmarking and site identity popups) prevents system keys such as alt+tab from working

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: XUL, defect)

Description

[[:Aleksej]]

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9a8pre) Gecko/2007081704 Minefield/3.0a8pre
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9a8pre) Gecko/2007081604 Minefield/3.0a8pre

Debian Lenny, Metacity, GNOME

StR:
1. Click the star in the urlbar twice, so it gets highlighted, and the bookmarking/tagging UI appears.
2. Try to use system hotkeys like Alt-Tab, Alt-space, or something you use to switch or move windows between workspaces.
3. Try using Firefox hotkeys like Alt-F or F1.

Actual results:
2. Nothing happens. Ctrl-Shift-arrow selects text in the content area.
3. Firefox hotkeys work.

Expected results:
Things like Alt-Tab should never been overridden by normal applications.


PS: Same happens in the Download Manager "(i)" UI.

Comment 1

[[:Aleksej]]

Still there in both places in Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9a8pre) Gecko/2007083104 Minefield/3.0a8pre

Comment 2

[[:Aleksej]]

Also in the Larry identity pop-up.

Comment 3

[Neil Deakin]

I'm pretty sure that this is because of http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=344059. Can't think of a workaround offhand though.

Comment 4

[Aaron Leventhal]

This is a keyboard grab for menus which is expected on Gnome; that part is not a bug.

The other portion of this bug is a dupe of bug 393398, because this should not be a menu -- it's a dialog.

Comment 5

[Neil Deakin]

The bookmarks popup is neither a menu nor a dialog, so no this resolution isn't correct.

Comment 7

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

I don't think this blocks based on comment 3 and 4, minusing.  If its felt that this is a mistake, please renom.

Comment 8

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

No progress on the Gnome bug, minusing for 3.1; Neil, is this basically invalid though, as it's a Gnome bug?

Comment 11

[Cedric Knight]

Attachment: mitigation of alt-tab bug in autocomplete case

I don't believe this is a GNOME bug per se, as I see identical results on KDE.  Alt-tab and PrtSc do work much as expected on Windows under these circumstances. Presumably Windows implements these system keys in a different way, as the application normally has little control over them unless hooking the keyboard at a low level. (Alternatively perhaps the cause is some special-case handling that doesn't work with Xorg's keymaps.)  The address autocompletion in Epiphany and Evolution under GNOME is unaffected.

IMO the most annoying example of the bug in current trunk is associated with the autocompletion popups for the URL and search bars in Firefox, and the address autocompletion in Thunderbird (bug 611461).  I don't recall the bug in FF2.  While the key-handling bug also affects several other widgets, such as the colour-picker widget and the Ctrl+D bookmark panel, these are deliberately invoked by the user; on the other hand, with autocompletion the user may need to very something with a fast task switch.

The Alt-tab bug does not affect controls that inherit from nsIMenuBoxObject because the first press of the Alt key closes the popup.  Popups that are derived from popup or general however need special code to get Alt-tab working, and PrtSc doesn't even work when a menulist or menu is open.

The attached deals with the annoying case in autocomplete.xml, such that the first Alt-tab closes the dropdown, and subsequent ones invoke the task switcher.  However, I wouldn't suggest for a moment that this is a fix to the general bug, which is probably somewhere deep in the fundamental popup implementation.

I've also played unsuccessfully with ignorekeys, accessibility and capturing vs bubbling event handlers, so suggest the resolution is either to add special key handling to each control to close the popup, or to look at the popup implementation.

Comment 12

[Neil Deakin]

Not sure if this if a good idea, but it should be Linux-only at least. (Inside an #ifdef MOZ_WIDGET_GTK2)

Comment 13

[Neil Deakin]

Note that the patch in bug 545429 also fixes this.

Comment 14

[Neil Deakin]

Can someone verify that this is now fixed?

Comment 15

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

(In reply to comment #14)
> Can someone verify that this is now fixed?

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:7.0a1) Gecko/20110617 Firefox/7.0a1 SeaMonkey/2.4a1 ID:20110617003205

At comment #0 step 2 using Gnome2 windowmanager (Metacity I think), when I hit Alt-Tab the bookmark doorhanger disappears near the end of the Location Bar and the Alt-Tab popup is displayed in the middle of the screen.

This is current trunk SeaMonkey for linux64: I did not test on Firefox, or on linux32 versions of Gecko.

Comment 16

[Justin Lebar (not reading bugmail)]

WFM on Ubuntu 11.04 x64 with 2011-06-17 nightly.

Comment 17

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

Moving to Core:XUL per https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1455336

Comment 18

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1527381