update-notifier swallows keyboard focus

[Sitsofe Wheeler]

Description of the problem:
The update-notifier applet seems to have the ability to swallow keyboard focus. Once swallowed the keyboard focus is never seen again in that panel.

Steps to reproduce (tricky):
1. Focus the "top expanded edge panel" at the top of the screen with the notification area in it (I usually do this using ctrl-alt-tab).
2. Press tab and check where the keyboard focus is (usually on the the firefox globe).
3. Use tab to progress to the notification area.

Expected results:
Dotted outline around each thing in notification area, or dotted outline around empty grey area if notification area is empty.

Actual results:
No dotted outline appears around anything. Pressing tab does not move to the next widget in the panel practically impossible to get keyboard focus back to the top panel again.

Additional information:
Killing off update-notifier allows the foucs to work as expected.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks for your bug. I doubt it's specific to update notifier. Could you try to get the bug without running update notifier?

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

> Could you try to get the bug without running update notifier?

Well as I said
"Killing off update-notifier allows the focus to work as expected."
so I'm not sure what further testing you want me to do... I'm pretty certain it is the key to all of this (believe me it took a long time to track this one down - bugs don't come out this concisely by themselves). At any rate I tested (simultaneously) a bunch of other programs that put up notification area icons (after killing off update-notifier):

best (from beagle)
gaim
gnome-cd
liferea
rhythmbox

Of the above keyboard focus (the dotted outline) only stops on gnome-cd correctly. However none of the other applets cause the focus to be swallowed when the notification area is focused and pressing tab moves the focus to the volume applet. After (re)running update-notifier keyboard focusing the notification causes the focus to disappear without trace.

On getting a friend to reproduce the same problem, it has been shown that the problem will not always manifest itself when there are no updates to do (and thus no icon to show). However if there is an icon there then the problem will arise.

What are your results?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

I've no dot lines around the notify area with or without update-notifier. Anyway the icon seems to stop the tab action

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

This still seems to be happening in dapper flight 3 but as per seb's comments it appears to be impossible to get the focus to stop in the tray even when update-notifier is not running.

[Jonathon Conte (thesicktwist)]

I'm experiencing a bug with focus rings appearing within the Notification Area applet even when there are no icons there. The focus rings are very subtle and can only be seen with certain themes (Crux, Simple and Smokey Blue to name a few). Attached is a screenshot of the bug. In the screenshot, I'm using a black GTK+ theme called Leech in order to make it easier to see the focus rings, of which there appear to be three.

I'm running Dapper Drake testing (Flight 4 + updates) and the Notification Area is version 2.13.91.

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

Sebastien;
Given that you were able to reproduce the stopping of the tab action could you confirm this bug?

[Andy Price (andy-price)]

I can confirm that the focus gets swallowed by the notification area on an up-to-date dapper with notification area version 2.14.1

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

Still here in Feisty.

Version Information:
Ubuntu Feisty
update-manager 0.57.8

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

Thanks for your bugreport.

I can reproduce the problem in gutsy, but it is not update-notifier specific. I can reproduce it just fine with just pidgin in the notification-area. I reassign.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

That's a gnome-panel issue and there is already a bug open about it

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

(Setting back to new)

Woah woah woah! A bug where? I've just searched launchpad's gnome-applets for "notification" and "focus" and I can't see a thing. I filed this bug way back in 2005 so I think you can help me out a bit and tell me where to look...

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

that's bug #34159