indicator applet traps keyboard focus

[Eitan Isaacson]

I believe that only metacity provides keyboard access to the gnome-panel, so this bug is not relevant for compiz, unfortunately.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Press ctrl+alt+tab and select the top panel.
2. Tab through the applets until you reach the indicator applet.
3. Press left/right to bring up the dropdown menu (this is unintuitive, I am going to file a separate bug for that).
4. Select a conversation or application ("Pidgin Internet Messenger").
5. Press enter.
6. The buddy list is show/hidden.
7. There is no way to get keyboard focus out of the panel without using the mouse (ok, there probably is, I just can't find it!).

[Ted Gould (ted)]

On Wed, 2009-02-25 at 20:37 +0000, Eitan Isaacson wrote:
> 7. There is no way to get keyboard focus out of the panel without using the mouse (ok, there probably is, I just can't find it!).

Does the same thing happen with the FUSA applet. They are both
GTKMenu's at their core so they should behave similarly.

[Eitan Isaacson (eeejay)]

Yes, the FUSA behaves in a similar fashion. The odd part is after pressing escape and leaving the menu, you could tab out of the applet but the only members in the focus cycle is the applet before and after the fusa/indicator.

Tabbing through applets in the GNOME panel is inherently broken, even the main menu applet does not do a great job. It is hard to fix because each applet is it's own app that needs to respect the tab order. So after you add more than two applets to the panel you get weirdness, that is why bug #334544 is important.

[Ted Gould (ted)]

I'm going to mark this as low. I think that it is a bug, but it's fundamentally a problem with gnome-panel. I'm not sure that we're going to be able to fix gnome-panel in a reasonable amount of time.

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

This bug should have a much higher importance than low. Even if we are not able to fix it in time for Lucid release, it does have a very severe impact on users that cannot use a mouse. That would make a default install unusable for those individuals, since once they enter the applets, they are not able to continue any work.

High: A bug which fulfills one of the following criteria:
    * Has a severe impact on a small portion of Ubuntu users (estimated)
    * Makes a default Ubuntu installation generally unusable for some users
          o For example, if the system fails to boot, or X fails to start, on a certain make and model of computer

[Lukáš (lu-dolezal)]

I'm also noticing this on indicator-applet 0.3.6, ubuntu 10.04 RC

At more, I'm noticing also other problems connected with this bug:

1) press ctrl-alt-tab, press tab to select indicator-applet
2) press left or right key (I agree with Eitan, that this is non standart and I also think big usability broke)
3) when you open some application menu, there is not only no way to leave indicator-applet and go to another, but in this moment is "frozen" whole desktop even accessing by mouse. Windows dont react to mouse, keys like alt-tab dont work.
Only way to revert is to click on application applet.

I think that this is not problem of panel, but problem of applet. Same problem is occuring on session-applet (?). I think that kernel of this problem in some library you use for that "button layout".

Next, by TAB (from application-indicator or session-indicator) you can "select" the following applet, but it doesnt react. This could be caused by bug in panel, but other button-like applets is not affected, like taskbar.

But I'm only tester :) Dont hit me please :)

Thanks

[Dylan McCall (dylanmccall)]

This, combined with the removal of a countdown in the shutdown confirmation, makes it incredibly difficult to shut down or log out using the keyboard. If the user was blind, it would be impossible.

I think there was some confusion in triaging this bug. The overarching issue that was mentioned (gnome-panel needs to be thrown into the sea strapped to an anchor) is a big, long-term thing.

However, the specific issue this bug discusses, which is that the indicator applet isn't release input grabs properly, can be fixed here without impacting the surrounding system in any way.
(It is also a very serious problem in itself and needs to be looked, for Lucid, if ubuntu.com is to continue promoting accessibility).

[Daniel (daniel-jacobs)]

For me this bug is a serious problem, because you can't close some application running in a gnome-terminal savely without keyboard access. So this bug can cause data losses!
Clicking with the mouse an the applet does sometimes not work for me.
But I' ve found a way to get back the default keyboard behaviour. Simply lock the screen using the mouse and then unlock it again. There after the keyboard behaves normal.
I hope this can help some of you, but for handicapped people this doesn 't work either.