726937 - FF Mobile cannot properly handle devices having physical keyboards

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Keyboards and IME, defect, P3)

Description

[Paolo Marani]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:10.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/10.0.1
Build ID: 20120208060813

Steps to reproduce:

Many Android tablet device, like ASUS eeePad Transformer TF101, have a physical keyboards for typing text. Others can take advantage of an externally connected keyboard via USB. Firefox Mobile does not recognize ALT_Gr key making impossible typing characters like '@' (AT) and many other symbols. This make the browser completely unusable. (Cannot even type email addresses).


Actual results:

ALTGr is used to type some extra chars in many keyboards, like @, €, # and so on.
Also some special keys like CURSOR UP,DN,LEFT,RIGHT are not recognized.


Expected results:

Characters obtaibeble by AltGr+<key> combinations should work like in native android browser. Cursor keys should behave moving caret on textboxes. Virtual keyboard is ok, but physical keyboard is unusable with FF mobile so far.

Comment 1

[Tony Chung [:tchung]]

need qa investigation.  we have a ASUS transformer keyboard in office somewhere. Naoki, can you take a look?

Comment 2

[Naoki Hirata :nhirata (please use needinfo instead of cc)]

Unfortunately, I don't have the keyboard nor device to test with.

Comment 3

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

Can reproduce this with any bluetooth keyboard; albeit I don't have an engravings model. I just setup an Apple Bluetooth keyboard to try this out.

Comment 4

[Paolo Marani]

Can reproduce connecting an external vanilla desktop USB keyboard to the asus tablet. I'm confident other tablets equipped with standard USB ports can expose the same behavior. AltGr and cursor keys are always ignored.

Comment 5

[Doug Turner (:dougt)]

i wouldn't block the first release for this.  chris, please renom if you disagree.

Comment 6

[Paolo Marani]

Well, being unable even to type a mail address into a textbox i think it's more than enough for apply blocking, of course from the point of view of those unlucky user minority that insists on working with a physical keyboard connected to a tablet. Also euro sign is affected, as far as european keyboards can type it using the combination AltGr + E (but AltGr key is not recognized).

Comment 7

[Scoobidiver (away)]

There are recent complains about that in the French support forum concerning Asus TF101: http://www.geckozone.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=103998.

Comment 8

[alex_mayorga]

If any devs are willing to mentor me on this bug, it might as well my first patch as I'd like to dual boot a Sony Ericsson XPERIA pro(1).

Any takers?

1 http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_xperia_pro-3779.php

Comment 9

[Kevin Brosnan [Ex-Mozilla]]

JChen would you be able to assist Alex?

Comment 10

[(inactive) Jim Chen [:jchen] [:darchons]]

Hi Alex, I can mentor you on this bug. Can you first confirm that this bug still happens using the latest Nightly?

Comment 11

[alex_mayorga]

Jim,

How can I confirm the bug?

Shall I try and get B2G on my phone 1st? If so, how exactly do I go about it?

Comment 12

[Paolo Marani]

I still have that Asus Transformer Pad with phy keyboard somewhere, i will try latest and report back if the issue is still present. Regards.

Comment 13

[(inactive) Jim Chen [:jchen] [:darchons]]

(In reply to alex_mayorga from comment #11)
> Jim,
> 
> How can I confirm the bug?
> 
> Shall I try and get B2G on my phone 1st? If so, how exactly do I go about it?

This is a Firefox for Android bug, so you would need an Android device with a physical keyboard like Paolo said.

Comment 14

[(inactive) Jim Chen [:jchen] [:darchons]]

Any updates?