464570 - Control+Tab does not switch to a moused over tab

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: Tabbed Browser, defect)

Description

[Jennifer Morrow [:Boriss] (UX)]

In Minefield 3.1b2pre, when Control+tab is pressed and the preview pane is shown, mousing over a thumbnail and releasing should open to that page.  Currently only clicking a thumbnail will override the tab selected by Tab, but mousing over and releasing should override this as well.  

Commant+Tab in OSX does this the way Control+Tab here should work.

Comment 1

[Simon Bünzli]

What if I accidentally bump into my mouse before releasing the Tab key? As big as our previews are, this would likely lead to unexpected (and quite unpredictable) behavior, wouldn't it?

Comment 2

[Jennifer Morrow [:Boriss] (UX)]

It's true that this could theoretically happen, but it seems like it would be pretty rare.  For this to happen, the user would need to be switching tabs with control+tab but not have their hand on the mouse, and then bump it somehow (the tab shouldn't get focus if a cursor is just resting on it, but only if it moves over a tab).

I think a more frequent use case is that the user already has their hand on the mouse and uses it to select a tab.  Especially if there are many previews open, it's much more efficient to mouse to one and release than tab, tab, tab, tab, tab, tab, release.