63647 - Element should have focus by default in common dialogs

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: UI Design, defect)

Description

[Blake Ross]

One button in all common dialogs needs to have focus by default.  I thought it 
should be OK unless a Cancel button is present (in which case it'd be Cancel), 
but consensus in #mozilla (and Windows standard) seems to be that the OK button 
has focus.

However, I think the standard is actually to give focus to the button that 
triggers the least harmful action.  Since this isn't always necessarily cancel, 
we'll need a way to let the caller choose.  I'm attaching a patch that, for 
now, provides the default focus defaults (under the assumption that no focus 
was explicitly specified somewhere by the caller).

Comment 1

[Blake Ross]

Attachment: [patch] set focus defaults and try to establish some common style in this file

Comment 2

[Blake Ross]

cc'ing alec for sr

Comment 3

[timeless]

r=timeless w/ a minor warning about Cancel as default. Request someone provide 
reference Human User Interface guidelines from Apple [macos], Microsoft 
[windows], Sun [java] and Be [BeOS/BeBible].

Comment 4

[Blake Ross]

Attachment: [patch] textfields need to get focused first

Comment 5

[Jesse Ruderman]

The button that has the dark border (initially? bug 63728) should also start 
with focus, I think.  No new code for default defaults should be necessary.

I just made this bug block bug 52751, "Hitting return dismisses dialog when 
default button disabled".

Btw, the phrase "common dialogs" usually means Windows save/print dialogs 
(which are common across applications), but I'm assuming that you're talking 
about dialogs with just text and buttons.

Comment 6

[Blake Ross]

That black border needs to follow focus, not the other way around.  I'm going 
to file a separate bug for that later.

Comment 7

[Blake Ross]

Attachment: [patch] use array per timeless...

Comment 8

[Blake Ross]

Attachment: [patch] use arrays/loop per timeless... (really, this time)

Comment 9

[timeless]

List, List, List, List, List. We agree they're lists :-)

r=timeless on 21294

Comment 10

[Blake Ross]

Alec, can you sr?

Comment 11

[Alec Flett]

any chance I can get a diff -bw? there's alot of indentation fixes there, not
sure where the real fix is.

Comment 12

[Blake Ross]

Attachment: [patch] -bw

Comment 13

[Alec Flett]

thanks, this is pretty neat.
sr=alecf

Comment 14

[Marcia Knous [:marcia]]

Netscape nav triage team: as per Alec Flett's pre-triage recommendation, this 
bug is nsbeta1-.

Comment 15

[Blake Ross]

Thanks, fix checked in.

Comment 16

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

tested this w/an alert dialog containing a textfield. eg, using an htaccess
dialog or the mailnews login dialog [used the former this time --the OK button
is in focus, and outlined in black]. vrfy fixed on linux, winnt and mac:
2001.02.09.08 comm bits.