409588 - keyboard navigation of webpages via TAB broken

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 383109

(Firefox :: Keyboard Navigation, defect)

Description

[Patrick H. Lauke]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9b2) Gecko/2007121120 Firefox/3.0b2
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9b2) Gecko/2007121120 Firefox/3.0b2

load any web page, hit TAB. the first link in the page is not focused. instead, the focus/caret is around the second link. hitting SHIFT+TAB correctly focuses on first link.

the same behaviour can be seen with: checkbox,radio,text inputs (but not, strangely, select boxes and submit buttons).

quite dramatically, ANY number of actual BUTTON elements are ignored if they appear at the start of the web page.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. load any website
2. hit TAB
Actual Results:  
the second link receives focus. if there's a form, and the first focusable form element is a checkbox, radio button, text input, this is skipped as well and the next focusable element receives focus. if there are any number of BUTTON elements, these are completely, the following focusable element is ignored, and the following focusable element receives focus.

Expected Results:  
the first link, input, BUTTON element, etc receive focus on hitting TAB the first time.

this dramatically breaks keyboard navigation.

Comment 1

[Steve England [:stevee]]

Are you able to reproduce this bug if you make a new firefox profile for a test?
- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_manager
(Do not delete your existing profile)

Comment 2

[Patrick H. Lauke]

steve(In reply to comment #1)
> Are you able to reproduce this bug if you make a new firefox profile for a
> test?
> - http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_manager
> (Do not delete your existing profile)

steve, my original bug report was done from a pristine new profile (as I'm still using FF2 as primary browser), which i set up explicitly for FF3beta2

Comment 3

[Patrick H. Lauke]

this bug is still present in FF3b3, installed with a fresh profile

Comment 4

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

I can't reproduce this using http://planet.mozilla.org or any other webpage I can think of. What site are you using to test?

(can't block until we get a confirmation)

Comment 5

[Patrick H. Lauke]

strangley, on planet.mozilla it seems fine. must be tied to the markup structure then. i can confirm this bug appearing for me on this non-representative list of sites:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/
www.splintered.co.uk
www.salford.ac.uk
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=409588
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/
http://slashdot.org/

(quickest way to test: go to the site, hit TAB, then SHIFT+TAB and check if there was a link - even hidden - before the one that got focus)

Comment 6

[Patrick H. Lauke]

confirming that i still see the bug in the latest nightly 3.0b4pre (2/3/2008)

two quick test:

go to www.mozilla.org
hitting TAB sets focus on "About"
there are in fact TWO links before that in the document:
- the hidden "#feature-content" one
- the link on the "mozilla.org" logo

go to www.mozilla.com/en-US/
hitting TAB sets focus on "Products"
the first link to get focus should be the "mozilla" logo link

Comment 7

[Steve England [:stevee]]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9b4pre) Gecko/2008030122 Minefield/3.0b4pre ID:2008030122

1. New profile, start firefox
2. Left click in the URL bar, enter http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/ and hit return
3. Wait for page to load
4. Once page is loaded, press TAB once

Expected:
- Mozilla logo at the top (points to http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/) should have focus ring.

Actual:
- Products link at top (points to http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/) has focus ring. Pressing SHIFT+TAB goes back a link to the expected one (The Mozilla logo).

This is a regression as in my 2.0.0.13pre build, pressing TAB takes me to the Mozilla link rather than the Products link.

Comment 8

[Steve England [:stevee]]

works: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a4pre) Gecko/2007041408 Minefield/3.0a4pre
fails: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a4pre) Gecko/2007041504 Minefield/3.0a4pre

Checkins to module PhoenixTinderbox between 2007-04-14 07:00 and 2007-04-15 05:00 :
http://bonsai.mozilla.org/cvsquery.cgi?treeid=default&module=PhoenixTinderbox&branch=HEAD&branchtype=match&dir=&file=&filetype=match&who=&whotype=match&sortby=Date&hours=2&date=explicit&mindate=2007-04-14+07&maxdate=2007-04-15+05&cvsroot=%2Fcvsroot

Perhaps due to bug 144000, which would make this a dupe of bug 382192 or bug 383109. Probably the former, but both are blocking1.9+ so this issue is going to get fixed for Firefox 3.