53948 - http-equiv refresh grabs keyboard focus

Status: NEW

(Core :: DOM: UI Events & Focus Handling, defect, P3)

Description

[Matthew Cline]

Linux build 20000922, Linux 2.2.14 i686, RedHat 6.1

If you have multiple Mozilla window open, and one of them has a
http-equiv refresh set via a META tag, then that window grabs the
keyboard focus, even if it's in the background.

To reproduce:

1) Go to AltaVista and do a search.
2) Open another window.
3) Load something in the second window, and make sure that it has keyboard
   focus by scrolling up and down with the arrow keys.
4) Wait until the AltaVista page refreshes (this should take about 5 minutes).
   Make sure that you leave the second window in the foreground, and with
   the keyboard focus.
5) Try scrolling the second window.  It should still have the keyboard focus,
   but the first window displaying AltaVista will scroll instead.

Comment 1

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

Confirmed 092508 trunk mozilla build. over to event handling

Comment 2

[Heikki Toivonen (remove -bugzilla when emailing directly)]

This is related, if not duplicate, of the bug where the app hangs if you have a 
modal dialog open and get a http-refresh in the content window. I don't remember 
the bug number and I can't seem to find it... Anyway, this is not so serious, 
which is why:

This bug has been marked "future" because the original netscape engineer working 
on this is over-burdened. If you feel this is an error, that you or another
known resource will be working on this bug,or if it blocks your work in some way 
-- please attach your concern to the bug for reconsideration.

Comment 3

[Scott Anderson]

Similarly (not sure if this is the same) in M18/Linux/Gnome a page the completes
loading will grab the focus from the page being used, to the extent that the new
page displays over the page being read. However, the window manager (Gnome in
this case) doesn't think that the focus has changed, and hitting alt tab goes to
the wrong page.

Comment 4

[Jan Carpenter]

not mine, passing on to vladimire

Comment 5

[John Levon]

see related bug 66900

Comment 6

[Robert de Forest]

It's not just scrolling that stops working.  The most annoying manifestation of
this bug is when using a webmail program like The IMP (horde.org/imp).  The
message list refreshes as often as it's told to, which is probably more less
time than it takes to compose a message in another tab.

I'm using Debian/GNU (unstable) and Galeon, but I'm fairly certain this is a
Gecko issue.

-- Robert de Forest <[e-mail]>

Comment 7

[Pham]

.

Comment 8

[Eliot Lear]

I see something similar with
http://games.yahoo.com/games/gen/cwpuz/puz_030924.html.  While playing the
crossword puzzle in java, if a page reloads in another tab, the focus will shift
away from the java and to the browser.  This really kills you if you hit the
backspace.  End of puzzle. :-|

Is this the right bug or is there another I should mention this in?

Comment 9

[Martijn Wargers (dead)]

Attachment: textarea gets focused every 2 seconds, so it steals the caret in other Mozilla windows

It is not only with http-equiv refresh.
If you use javascript to continuously focus a textarea or related, then the
caret also disappears on other windows.

Comment 10

[epu]

I've seen this bug is unassingned.
Is anyone working on this bug?

I think the focus method should be removed or have a dummy focus for
compatibility. It may be added to javascript permissions to let people choose.

Comment 11

[Martijn Wargers (dead)]

Is this still an issue in current trunk build?

Comment 12

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

*** Bug 317443 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 13

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20051121 Firefox/1.6a1 ID:2005112103

Don't know if this is quite the same, but when I load http://www.nu.nl/ in one window (has an auto-refresh) and https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=53948 in another window with the cursor in the Additional Comments box, it still has the focus after 10 minutes.
The same with tabs instead of windows.
So at least I can't reproduce Bug 317443.

Comment 14

[Russell Mosemann]

(In reply to comment #13)
> Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20051121
> Firefox/1.6a1 ID:2005112103
...
> So at least I can't reproduce Bug 317443.

I notice that you are using 1.6a1, and I'm using 1.5 RC3. Would that account for the difference? I have seen this happen on two different computers, one running Windows XP and the other Windows 2000. I've had another person tell me about this problem on a third computer. It is 100% reproduceable here.

I'm not sure this bug is the same as 53948. The previous descriptions talk about the focus being taken away. In my experience, the focus is simply turned off. It is not grabbed by anything else. Pressing the tab key moves to the next element on the same page.

Comment 15

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

(In reply to comment #14)

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051119 Firefox/1.5 ID:2005111903

Not reproducible with the testcase of comment #13.

Comment 16

[derphysiker]

This also happens on 1.5.0.1 on windows.

Having e.g. Nagios in one tab (refreshes via meta-refresh every minute) makes it nearly impossible to post to a forum or use some webmail like gmail, as any textbox you're writing in loses its focus as soon as the Nagios page in the other tab refreshes. And when that happens, backspace surely can ruin your day...

Comment 17

[Russell Mosemann]

This bug is alive and well in 2.0. One additional piece of information is that the problem I observe doesn't happen with all refreshed web pages. The refreshed page must also have javascript in it. I don't know if this related, but the page that causes focus problems for me has the following lines.

<BODY BGCOLOR="#ffffff"
ONLOAD="
    var tmp = (document.getElementsByName('focus'));
    if (tmp.length > 0) tmp[tmp.length-1].focus();
"
>

Comment 19

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

This seems to be fixed.
Can anyone confirm this ?

Comment 20

[Eliot Lear]

The web site I found the bug on in 2003 (!!) no longer exists, and I am no longer able to reproduce.