Firefox steals Alt-Tab whilst in URL completion drop-down

[Paul Sladen]

Firefox steals the key combination Alt-Tab, used to cycle through currently
running applications, when the URL bar is in drop-down completion mode. It also
appears to steal other alt-related key bindings.

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Load up more than 1 application. Eg. an xterm work-alike of your choice.
  2. Load Firefox
  3. Select the URL bar and start to type 'www.'
  4. As soon as the selection as moved into the drop-down list, press Alt-Tab

Alt-Tab (or Alt-Esc) will now act as though just 'Tab' or just 'Escape' were
pressed.

[Spam-minneboken (spam-minneboken)]

keyboard input ruined by autocomplete in mailnews is bug 61439

[Ben-bucksch (ben-bucksch)]

> Turning autocomplete off does NOT prevent this bug: the autocomplete box is not
> shown, but the keyboard is grabbed anyway.

That might be a bug by itself.

[Jg-jmkg (jg-jmkg)]

Yep this is annoying. I can't Alt-Fx to switch virtual desktops in Enlightenment
for example.

[Bstell (bstell)]

bug 61439 separately addresses:

  "German keyboards can no longer enter @ or ~ when autocomplete kicks in"

[Akkana Peck (akkzilla)]

I'd be happiest if I could just turn off the dropdown in order to stop the focus
stealing. Is there any way to do that? Turning off autocomplete doesn't do it;
it just reduces the number of items in the dropdown to one instead of many. I'd
prefer to turn off the dropdown entirely, because it's visually distracting as
well as stealing my keyboard focus.

[scb147 (scb147)]

*** Bug 85365 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Nicholas-metrix (nicholas-metrix)]

Akkana, I want the exact same thing.
Perhaps a seperate bug should be filed for that instead of mutating this one.

[Ben-bucksch (ben-bucksch)]

Filed bug 97344.

[Hewitt (hewitt)]

Can anyone confirm that this is still a problem?

[Jg-jmkg (jg-jmkg)]

Yes, it does still occur. Tested in build pulled from the tip today on Linux.
The workaround is to simply click elsewhere then do your desired keyboard
combination to, say, switch desktops.

[Blizzard (blizzard)]

dup

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 106707 ***

[Blizzard (blizzard)]

woops, duped in the wrong direction

[Blizzard (blizzard)]

*** Bug 106707 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Ian-hixie (ian-hixie)]

This also occurs on Windows. -> All/All.

[Ham-mozilla-org (ham-mozilla-org)]

This is currently not fixed for Mozilla 1.1 on Linux. Very irritating (makes
full keyboard navigation impossible if you need to check something in another
window in order to finish choosing your URL!).

[Spam-minneboken (spam-minneboken)]

*** Bug 171921 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[=?iso-8859-1?q?C=E9sar?= (cemariz)]

Why don't we vote this bug??

[Spam-minneboken (spam-minneboken)]

*** Bug 237697 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Sgifford (sgifford)]

Expanding summary a bit; this would have prevented the dups from bug 237697 and
bug 171921.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Firefox steals the key combination Alt-Tab, used to cycle through currently
running applications, when the URL bar is in drop-down completion mode. It also
appears to steal other alt-related key bindings.

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Load up more than 1 application. Eg. an xterm work-alike of your choice.
  2. Load Firefox
  3. Select the URL bar and start to type 'www.'
  4. As soon as the selection as moved into the drop-down list, press Alt-Tab

Alt-Tab (or Alt-Esc) will now act as though just 'Tab' or just 'Escape' were
pressed.

[Ian Jackson (ijackson)]

I have reproduced this. It is also reported upstream at
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=81912

The problem is relatively minor, so I don't plan to fix it for Ubuntu.
Hopefully upstream will fix it and when they do we will get the fix in our next
release.

[Ajschult (ajschult)]

This isn't just location bar (or even autocomplete). It happens with HTML form drop-downs too.
==> XUL

[Vassilis Pandis (pandisv)]

This is still present in 1.5.dfsg+1.5.0.1-1ubuntu10. (This bug is actually twice as old as Ubuntu itself by the way)

[David Farning (dfarning)]

Still open upstream in 2.0.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

upstream confirmed bugs are 'In Progress' for us.

[Infinite-childness (infinite-childness)]

6 years later and still not fixed?

[=?iso-8859-1?q?C=E9sar?= (cemariz)]

Please, vote this bug.

[Saša Bodiroža (jazzva)]

Present in Firefox 3.

[Fernando Miguel (fernandomiguel)]

also on FF 3.1

r$ apt-cache show firefox-3.1
Package: firefox-3.1
Source: firefox-3.1
Priority: optional
Section: web
Installed-Size: 3520
Maintainer: Ubuntu Mozilla Team <email address hidden>
Architecture: amd64
Version: 3.1~b2~hg20081121r21863+nobinonly-0ubuntu1~fta1

[Nicola Ferralis (feranick)]

Any news on this bug?

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

No more fixes for Firefox 2.

[bwashed (kjartan-hoie)]

Another duplicate: Bug 454080

[bwashed (kjartan-hoie)]

Other consequences of this bug:

- "Change desktop" (ctrl + alt + arrow) does not work (Ubuntu)
- Gnome panel: If a panel is set to Autohide, it will normally
reappear when the mouse pointer is hovering over it. This bug causes the panel
to remain hidden.
- Normal tab navigation within Firefox does not work / changes behaviour (ex: pressing tab to move from address-field to search-field)

[Pierre Chef (pierre.chef)]

This is a metacity bug, see #403195

[Mozilla-bugs-micahscomputing (mozilla-bugs-micahscomputing)]

Ubuntu Bug:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/firefox-3.5/+bug/22199

Still occurring on 3.7 trunk.

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

Firefox 3.0 is only receiving Security Updates and major bug fixes at this point.

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

Moving tracking to Firefox 3.5

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

This is indeed a Firefox bug as I do not have metacity installed.

[Ben-bucksch (ben-bucksch)]

Workaround: Press ESC (makes the dropdown go away), then Alt-Tab

[Pierre Chef (pierre.chef)]

In fact, the URL completion drop-down and the search box completion drop-down steal any shortcut.

Begin to type something in the url or search box and wait for some suggestions.
Press Alt+Tab, Alt+F1, Alt+F2, or a shortcut defined in System / Preferences / Shortcuts (I tried with Pause or Ctrl+Alt+J assigned to eject, and Pause assigned to play/pause).
Nothing happens.

[Mozilla-bugs-micahscomputing (mozilla-bugs-micahscomputing)]

*** Bug 454080 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

Resetting to Triaged on all Firefox source packages since we're keeping them for the moment.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

I'm not convinced this is actually a real bug. This is how all menu's work (including GTK menus), and you will find that every drop-down menu on the system works in this way. Menu's always grab the keyboard and pointer so that they are able to know if you've navigated outside of the menu, and close the menu automatically when you do so.

[Mikael Ståldal (mikaelstaldal)]

This is indeed a real problem which needs to be fixed.

I have now experienced problem with Firefox 3.6.6 hangs, and when it hangs in this state, the whole system became effectively unusable since you are not able to switch to another program or kill Firefox. (The fact that Firefox 3.6.6 hangs is another, probably unrelated, problem.)

However, you can argue that the problem actually is that the desktop environment allows Firefox to steam keyboard shortcuts.

[Ben-bucksch (ben-bucksch)]

> Workaround: Press ESC (makes the dropdown go away)

That is, unless Firefox is frozen. Ubuntu bug commenter says this happened to him and locked him out of X.

[Alexey Kotlyarov (koterpillar)]

> I'm not convinced this is actually a real bug. This is how all menu's
> work (including GTK menus), and you will find that every drop-down menu
> on the system works in this way. Menu's always grab the keyboard and
> pointer so that they are able to know if you've navigated outside of the
> menu, and close the menu automatically when you do so.

Menus indeed work that way, but autocomplete list is not a menu. Unlike
a menu, it doesn't have focus and isn't explicitly called upon by user.
It should be unobtrusive. In fact, I've almost agreed with you after
testing some applications' menus, but...

1. Firefox's form entry autocomplete entries close on Alt-Tab. A second
press is needed to actually switch, but it's still better.
2. Epiphany's address bar autocomplete behaves the same.

While I would certainly prefer Alt-Tab work even in the menus, Firefox's
behavior is still inconsistent.

P.S. Chromium's autocomplete - both in the address bar and in forms - is
ideal, letting Alt-Tab through the first time.

[Chris Wilson (notgary-deactivatedaccount)]

Removing from the paper cuts project since this isn't a minor design flaw, rather it's simply a bug that needs fixed.

[Mechanical snail (replicator-snail)]

The papercuts project is explicitly for bugs. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PaperCut#What%20is%20a%20paper%20cut?

[Timothy Arceri (t-fridey)]

Tested with firefox 7.0.1 and Ubuntu Oneiric. alt-tab works as it should. Before I close this bug is anyone still having this issue? If so what version of Firefox and Ubuntu do you have?

[Timothy Arceri (t-fridey)]

Tested with firefox 7.0.1 and Ubuntu Oneiric. alt-tab works as it should first try. Is anyone still having this issue?

[bwashed (kjartan-hoie)]

Seems to work fine on Ubuntu 10.11. Altered tab behaviour (Comment #25) remains, but I guess that's a different bug..

[Ben-bucksch (ben-bucksch)]

confirmed.
WORKSFORME, too, on Ubuntu with Gnome 2.