567654 - Keyboard navigation for new addon manager doesn't appear to allow easy switching from tabs to list

Status: RESOLVED INACTIVE

(Toolkit :: Add-ons Manager, defect)

Description

[Erik Vold]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.3a5pre) Gecko/20100522 Minefield/3.7a5pre
Build Identifier: 

In the old addon manager I could press left or right to switch the selected tab, then up and down to switch the selected item in the list.

With the new addon manager I cannot switch the selected tab, when a listed item is selected, and vice versa, as far as I can tell, and please correct me if I'm wrong.

There is the tab button, but that has to be pressed multiple times.

So I suggest using the right & left keys to switch focus from the selected tab (left) to the selected item (right). The solution doesn't matter to me as much as having a hotkey to help easily switch the selected list item and tab easily from the keyboard.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+2]]

We definitely have to improve the keyboard handling for the new addons manager. But before we can work on those improvements we should make sure that the general functionality is working and existing panes will not change anymore.

Tasks to do:
* Specify the correct tab order
* Show focus rings for focused elements
* Decide if left/right arrow key should switch between pane selection and list

Marco, is this bug also accessibility related? I would think so.

Comment 2

[Marco Zehe (:MarcoZ)]

Yes it is. Obviously the panes need to be in an accessible state for the keyboard navigation to always provide the correct feedback. I agree with your points!

Comment 3

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

How do similar UI's handle keyboard navigation?

Comment 4

[Marco Zehe (:MarcoZ)]

I don't think I've ever seen this complex UI inside a browser tab. ;-) Also, the fact that we could switch tabs in the old Add-Ons Manager by left and right arrowing was rahter unique, but darn convenient. I could imagine that left and right arrow could do the same here when focused in the list of items (add-ons, jetpacks), and updating the other list accordingly by setting highlight to the newly selected item, but keeping focus in the list of actual content items.

Comment 5

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

(In reply to comment #4)
> I don't think I've ever seen this complex UI inside a browser tab. ;-) Also,
> the fact that we could switch tabs in the old Add-Ons Manager by left and right
> arrowing was rahter unique, but darn convenient. I could imagine that left and
> right arrow could do the same here when focused in the list of items (add-ons,
> jetpacks), and updating the other list accordingly by setting highlight to the
> newly selected item, but keeping focus in the list of actual content items.

I was more referring to similar user interfaces in other applications. Those I recall using have only ever used tab to switch between.

Comment 6

[Marco Zehe (:MarcoZ)]

Like I said, the ability to switch tabs by arrowing left and right from anything other than the tabs itself was rather unique in the old Add-Ons manager. Other Windows (and I think also Linux) keyboard use is Ctrl+Tab to switch tabs from anywhere inside the dialog. But that will definitely conflict with the regular switching of browser tabs in our case and thus is out of the question.

Comment 7

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

I'm not sure that this blocks. Keyboard navigation is still possible but certainly could be better. Mike, what do you think?

Comment 8

[Dave Townsend [:mossop]]

Not going to block. Would be nice to have things work as easily as possible and I'd approve a safe patch to fix it, but so long as you can tab around the UI normally that is enough for release.

Comment 9

[Dave Hennings]

Is this bug still active? Having no visual indication of what is focused (except for buttons) makes it difficult (though still possible) to navigate. Focus rings FTW!

Comment 10

[BMO Automation]

Per policy at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Bug_Triage/Projects/Bug_Handling/Bug_Husbandry#Inactive_Bugs. If this bug is not an enhancement request or a bug not present in a supported release of Firefox, then it may be reopened.