412511 - Improve keyboard navigation in task list

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Calendar :: Lightning Only, defect)

Description

[Kumaran Santhanam]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6
Build Identifier: Thunderbird version 2.0.0.6 (20070728)

In the Lightning tasks list, there is insufficient keyboard navigation.  A few important keyboard actions would be very useful:

- Hotkey for creating a new task
- Hotkey for placing focus on the task list
- Enter should open the currently selected task


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install Lightning
2. Add some tasks
3. Try to navigate with the keyboard

Comment 1

[Kumaran Santhanam]

Attachment: Enter and Ctrl-Enter hotkey support

Enter will open the current task.
Ctrl-Enter will create a new task.

Comment 2

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen][📱📆]]

Comment on attachment 297522 [details] [diff] [review]
Enter and Ctrl-Enter hotkey support

Kumaran, the term "UI" was meant for user experience decision. Christian does ui-review, while others do the code review.

I'm not sure if the chosen hotkeys are wanted (christian will take care of that), but I'll go ahead and do the code review:

please use braces even for one-line if, i.e
>+            if (event.ctrlKey) {
>+                createTodoWithDialog();
>+            } else {
>+                modifyEventWithDialog(getSelectedToDo());
>+            }


>+            event.preventDefault();
>+            event.stopPropagation();
Are these really needed? If there is no default action for return, please remove preventDefault.

r=philipp with these changes.

Comment 3

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen][📱📆]]

Comment on attachment 297522 [details] [diff] [review]
Enter and Ctrl-Enter hotkey support

Actually, taking a second look it seems this patch is not up to date anymore. calendar-unifinder-todo.js doesn't contain key handlers anymore. This was moved to calendar-task-tree.xml since the task lists were unified.

In that file, its already possible to edit events using return. In that case, the only addition here would be to use ctrl+enter to create an event. Keeping ui-r on christian to judge if that is correct or if a different hotkey combination should be used.

I personally would opt for using a different combination, i.e Ctrl+T to generally create tasks using the dialog. This would be a <key> and not specific to the tree.

Comment 4

[Kumaran Santhanam]

Sounds good.  I'm okay with Ctrl+T as a global keystroke.

I am not familiar enough with the codebase to easily see how to map a keystroke to focus the task pane.  Is there an easy way to do this?  That would allow full keyboard navigation between the task pane and email.

Comment 5

[Christian Jansen]

Currently we have CTRL+D [1] assigned for New Task, due to the fact that CTRL+T is already assigned by TB for "Get New Messages for Current Account" (see [2]).
I personally would prefer the following:

In Mail Mode:
- CTRL + N or CTRL + M creates a new Message
- CTRL + E creates a new Event
- CTRL + D creates a new Task

In Calendar Mode:
- CTRL + N or CTRL + E creates a new Event
- CTRL + M creates a new Message
- CTRL + D creates a new Task

In Task Mode:
- CTRL + N and CTRL + D creates a new Task
- CTRL + M creates a new Message
- CTRL + E creates a new Event


[1] CTRL+T = Get New Messages for Current Account
    CTRL+A = Select All
    CTRL+S = Save
    CTRL+K = Move to Search Bar

[2] http://www.mozilla.org/support/thunderbird/keyboard

Comment 6

[Philipp Kewisch [:Fallen][📱📆]]

(In reply to comment #5) 
This is the way it currently works:

> In Mail Mode:
> - CTRL + E creates a new Event
This currently does "Edit message as new", so this won't work :/

> - CTRL + D creates a new Task
> - CTRL + N or CTRL + M creates a new Message
works

> 
> In Calendar Mode:
> - CTRL + N or CTRL + E creates a new Event
N creates message, E does nothing

> - CTRL + M creates a new Message
> - CTRL + D creates a new Task
works

> 
> In Task Mode:
> - CTRL + N and CTRL + D creates a new Task
N creates message, D creates task
> - CTRL + M creates a new Message
works
> - CTRL + E creates a new Event
Does nothing

Kumaran, assigning keys is a matter of adding a <key> element into the appropriate XUL files. It would be great if this could be done in a unified manner (i.e in calendar-common-sets.xul), but its possible that that doesn't work out. You will have to disable the thunderbird <key> elements when in calendar or task mode, so that the thunderbird keys are not used.

to do so, you probably want to call a specific function in messenger-overlay-toolbar.js' ltnSwitch2Task and ltnSwitch2Calendar that disables/enables the correct elements. Remember to re-enable the command in ltnSwitch2Mail. You might want to not directly use the disabled attribute, in case thunderbird or an extension has a good reason to disable the keys manually.

Comment 7

[Kumaran Santhanam]

Any suggestions for a key to switch focus to the sidebar task?  I noticed that when the focus is in the sidebar, pressing <SPACE> will bring you back to the message list window.

Comment 8

[Christian Jansen]

F6 would be, at least on Windows, the appropriate key for traveling through the panes. If the focus is in the Inbox list the travel order should be:

Inbox -> Message Pane -> "Today" of the Mini Day -> Event List -> Task List -> Mail Folder Tree (the pane on the left hand side)

Comment 9

[Christian Jansen]

Kumaran are you still working on this bug? I'll minus this review till we're making progress again. Thanks for understanding.

Comment 10

[Martin Schröder [:mschroeder]]

No progress since January, no response since review. -> Assigning to nobody@m.o

Comment 11

[Martin Schröder [:mschroeder]]

I'm inclined to close this bug report because comment#0 hadn't taken Task mode/tab into account, where most of the suggested UI enhancements are already in place. Any opinions or objections?