587010 - Add keyboard UI for manipulated groups and tabs in Tab Candy

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox Graveyard :: Panorama, defect, P2)

Description

[Marco Zehe (:MarcoZ)]

Tab Candy is currently totally keyboard inaccessible. The main feature appealing also to blind users would be to be able to sort tabs into groups. So the options to add a new group, copy & paste actions for tabs and groups respectively, and of course the search and selection of tabs should be keyboard accessible.

David has some more ideas on this, too, and he might be able to more accurately describe some of the things because he can actually see what's going on. :)

Comment 1

[David Bolter [:davidb] (NeedInfo me for attention)]

I think we should do something awesome for our keyboard users here.

I wonder if detection of keyboard could animate the tab candy grouping view into a tree view, and then adopt typical tree keyboard Ux?
http://dev.aol.com/dhtml_style_guide#treeview

Comment 2

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

We need shortcuts for the following functionality:

 - switch between groups (including create a group)
 - move tabs into a specific group (including taking it out of groups)

Sadly, I don't think this blocks the release. Happy to take a patch, and the Tab Candy team should figure out the shortcuts, but might miss the 4.0 cutoff.

Comment 3

[Aza Raskin [:aza]]

Currently we have keyboard support for moving between tabs (the arrow keys) and entering and exiting from Panorama via the tabs (Return, Escape, Option/Control-Space). Thus what we are missing is:

* Move tabs to a specific group
* Create a group

Given that you can switch tabs with the keyboard, you can also switch groups with the keyboard (although not necessarily highly expediently).

As a point of reference, neither the Chrome nor Safari speed-dial-like new-tab pages provide any keyboard access at all. My feeling is that we are in a good place now for a first release. Certainly will appreciate patches. I'd like this bug (or another bug which this depends on) to be spec'cing what the keyboard shortcuts should be. That can happen in the nearer term, but implementation might be pushed further out.

Comment 4

[Ian Gilman [:iangilman]]

(In reply to comment #3)

> Given that you can switch tabs with the keyboard, you can also switch groups
> with the keyboard (although not necessarily highly expediently).

Would it make sense for our "next group" key combo (control `) to move you from group to group when you're in the Panorama UI? I don't mean taking you into tabs, just move the selection around.

Comment 5

[Alex Limi (:limi) — Firefox UX Team]

(In reply to comment #4)
> Would it make sense for our "next group" key combo (control `) to move you from
> group to group when you're in the Panorama UI? I don't mean taking you into
> tabs, just move the selection around.

Not until tabs = windows, IMO.

Comment 6

[Alex Limi (:limi) — Firefox UX Team]

Sorry, that should have been:

Not until groups = windows, IMO.

Comment 7

[Aza Raskin [:aza]]

Given the ARIA additions plus search accessibility, I'm punting this until after Firefox 4.

Comment 8

[Ian Gilman [:iangilman]]

This bug has been marked as "future" (post-ff4.0) but it still blocked our ff4.0 milestone bug; removing blocking.

Comment 9

[Nick McCurdy]

I really believe there should be a simple keyboard shortcut for new tab group, like ctrl-alt-n (I'm a Mac user, correct me if that's in use by something). You can make a new tab or window with the keyboard, so why not a tab group? For me, this is the one thing I think belongs in panorama the most, and it's pretty simple and makes a lot of sense in my opinion.

Comment 10

[persona]

Much needed feature for us keyboard addicts.
Appart from what was said before regarding the shortcuts to add :

> - new tab group (includind close all/delete)
> - switch between groups
> - move tabs into a specific group (including taking it out of groups)

I would also work out a better way to switch between groups in the panorama view (cmd+shift+e) which would be tab and shift+tab to switch between groups.