422059 - Allow tabs to be focused by keyboard

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Other Applications :: ChatZilla, enhancement)

Description

[:Gijs (he/him)]

STR:

Try to use the keyboard to focus the tabbox/tabs

AR:
fail.

ER:
manage to focus tabs, and navigate with the arrow keys, and bring up the context menu using Shift+F10 or whatever.


Marco: I'm guessing this is as simple as putting it in the tabindex order? I don't think we should put it in the F6 list, because it isn't in the browser either, but if you disagree, do let me know.

Comment 1

[:Gijs (he/him)]

So, actually, the reason they can't be focused is because the <tabs> element has:

setfocus="false"


This was done in bug 299458, from a patch by Silver. Quote:

... [this patch] fixes issues with bad focus code in tabbox.xml (setfocus="false" stops the tab code being lame and focusing itself) ...



Silver, could you remind us what the issues were? Is there a sane way to make the tabs focusable without getting back into those issues? Thanks!

Comment 2

[James Ross]

The issue was that clicking a tab would set focus to the tab because the tabbox couldn't find an associated tabpanel to put the focus into. We need to keep it or manage the focus ourselves - and you know which is going to hurt more.

Comment 3

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Tested on windows by Silver and Marco, Linux by me, and Mac is too broken for us to fix, if it really doesn't work (it doesn't on a really old xulrunner I have around... but that could just be mac focus funniness. And even so, there's still ctrl(+shift)+tab, ctrl+pageup/dn, and ctrl+# (where # is a number from 1 to 9). Which all work, even on mac (substituting meta for ctrl, obviously).

--> WFM