Ctrl-PageUp doesn't switch tabs when text field or drop menu has focus

[James "Doc" Livingston]

When a text field or drop menu has the focus on a page, Ctrl-PageUp and
Ctrl-PageDown no longer work to switch tabs. This is very annoying if you want
to switch two tabs in one direction, and the middle tab happens to put it's
focus in a text field or drop menu. This probably also has some a11y
implications, because those keystrokes are the only way to change tabs with the
keyboard.

1.4.99+1.5rc3.dfsg-1ubuntu4

[Steve-england (steve-england)]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050413
Firefox/1.0+
New profile WFM. Except when the caret was in the text box on the google-firefox
homepage, then it didn't work.

[Steve-england (steve-england)]

I have a feeling this might be the same kind of regression as bug 290172.
Certainly, with firefox 1.02, CTRL-PGUP and CTRL-PGDN changes tab when a
one-line textbox has focus changes tabs, but in official nightly Mozilla/5.0
(Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050413 Firefox/1.0+ this
is no longer the case.

[Steve-england (steve-england)]

OK sorry for all the irrelevent comments. This bug is also present in
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050411
Firefox/1.0+
so it must have regressed before that.

[Steve-england (steve-england)]

Steps to reproduce
1. Have two tabs open (eg: this one, and another one)
2. Click in the textbox "summary" so the caret is present in it
3. Press CTRL-PGUP or CTRL PG-DN

Expected: Change tab
Actual: auto-complete is popped

[Bfowler (bfowler)]

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8b2) Gecko/20050413
Firefox/1.0+

Ctrl-PgUp and Ctrl-PgDown still work here!

[Aaronleventhal (aaronleventhal)]

Ctrl+pageup/pagedown are the keys to open the autocomplete history for a
textfield in IE as well, so that's the standard use of that key in a browser
textfield. I'm not actually sure who implemented that for Firefox, but anyway,
it's by design.

Use Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab to switch tabs, or Ctrl+digit.

[Steve-england (steve-england)]

I thought it was just PGUP and PGDN that opened the auto-complete history for a
text-field. Certainly it works. With a modifier like CTRL I would expect tab
switching as is the norm throughout firefox when text-fields don't have focus.

Also, in the IE URL bar it is PGUP and PGDN that trigger the auto-complete
history; CTRL+PGUP and CTRL+PGDN do nothing.

[Aaronleventhal (aaronleventhal)]

Go to www.google.com in IE. Hit Ctrl+pagedown. History opens without selecting
an item.

Reopen this bug if you can prove that only plain PageUp/PageDown should do that,
or that Ctrl+Tab proves unusable for you.

[Steve-england (steve-england)]

*** Bug 210435 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Andrea76 (andrea76)]

it is VERY annoying that CTRL + PGUP or PGDOWN doesnt' switch tabs.

It should do it. It works on Firefox 1.0.7 but not on branch.

[Mikegoodspeed (mikegoodspeed)]

*** Bug 315526 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Jo-hermans (jo-hermans)]

*** Bug 318901 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[James "Doc" Livingston (jrl)]

When a text field or drop menu has the focus on a page, Ctrl-PageUp and
Ctrl-PageDown no longer work to switch tabs. This is very annoying if you want
to switch two tabs in one direction, and the middle tab happens to put it's
focus in a text field or drop menu. This probably also has some a11y
implications, because those keystrokes are the only way to change tabs with the
keyboard.

1.4.99+1.5rc3.dfsg-1ubuntu4

[Zug-treno (zug-treno)]

*** Bug 319827 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Meshko-scorch2000 (meshko-scorch2000)]

why is this resolved wontfix? This is a clear regression from 1.0.7

[Adam Guthrie (ispiked)]

*** Bug 325576 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Bugzilla-e-mail (bugzilla-e-mail)]

I'm also surprised that this is wontfix. ctrl-shift-tab is a lot less convenient finger-wise than ctrl-pgup. ctrl-pgup works almost all the time, only in one undocumented instance it now doesn't work.

The official list of Firefox keyboard shortcuts at http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/keyboard says that either works, which right now isn't the case.

[Henrik Nilsen Omma (henrik)]

I can confirm this in the latest dapper and agree that it does have a11y implications.

[Danswer (danswer)]

This seems strange to me - filing another Bug report, bugzilla shows me this bug as hot within the last two weeks. What's up with that? Anyway, on my FF 1.5.0.2, ctrl+tab functionality works as expected: it cycles through the tabs in my FF window. And I like it that way. Seems like this should be updated to Resolved Fixed. I have caret browsing turned on (F7).

As to Comment #8 ... if you mean going to the address bar, on my IE 6, the history is pulled down by alt+down arrow as it is with Ff (and I would suggest that this is the logical way to extend it to other contexts since there is already a standard). ctrl+tab is standard Microsoft behaviour for switching tabs, working in Excel and Word going back to forever, and in dialog boxes such as those found in the control panel/Regional and Language Options. I haven't tried IE 7 yet, but I would expect it to work there, too.

[Tim-w-connors (tim-w-connors)]

ctrl-pgup/down is a hell of a lot more convenient than ctrl-shift-tab, and you can already pop down the completion history with pgdown (funny, I thought alt-down arrow was the standard in Windows. I guess the good thing about standards is there are so many to choose from)

Yes, lets emulate everything IE is doing, good and bad, and lets ignore how firefox/mozilla/netscape have been behaving for the last *decade*.

[Bugzilla-tuxmachine (bugzilla-tuxmachine)]

In addition to the previously stated convenience factor when going from right to left (less buttons to hold down), another issue is those OS's which use Ctrl-Tab for their own function, i.e. to switch virtual desktops. This is responsible for a significant loss of productivity when I am browsing. Also, I don't understand what the reasoning is for not fixing this.

[Pilgrim-gmail (pilgrim-gmail)]

Aaron and I have discussed this on IRC and he feels that consistency with IE is not compelling enough to warrant this inconvenience. I disagree, but I'm reopening this bug at his request.

[Aaronleventhal (aaronleventhal)]

Yes, I'd prefer:
1) consistency across textfields within Mozilla and on the OS. Alt+up/down and F4 are the keys to open dropdowns. People know those keys, most users don't typically know about ctrl+pageup/pagedown for dropdowns.
2) Ctrl+tab is often used on Linux for "next desktop". Fixing this gives those users a different key combo, which is one of the reasons we had ctrl+pageup/down in the first place
3) And we get a fix for the super-annoying bug 318788 for free. It turns out we also do the dropdown for plain pageup/pagedown

As we fix this we should also make F4 drop down the list. Alt+down already works.

[Bugzilla-tuxmachine (bugzilla-tuxmachine)]

*** Bug 350817 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Jeff Greene (jeffgreene)]

I can also confirm this on Edgy with Firefox Bon Echo Beta 2 (2.0 b2).

[David Farning (dfarning)]

Upstream the feeling is that ctrl+tab should replace ctrl+page[up|down] for tab movement. The issue is still being discussed.

Ctrl+pageup/pagedown are the keys to open the autocomplete history for a
textfield in IE as well, so that's the standard use of that key in a browser
textfield. I'm not actually sure who implemented that for Firefox, but anyway,
it's by design.

Use Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab to switch tabs, or Ctrl+digit.

Thanks
David

[James "Doc" Livingston (jrl)]

Hooray for standardisation of key-bindings :-\

Control-Tab is GTK's key for "*really* go to the next widget" when normal tab doesn't work, because you're in a text field that accepts tabs or something.

[Zeniko (zeniko)]

*** Bug 364566 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Mey-wer (mey-wer)]

ctrl+tab switches virtual desktops as stated before.
many users want ctrl+pgup/pgdown to switch between tabs.

The best solution would be to do 2 things:

Make ctrl+page_up/down default-behaviour to switch between tabs.

Give possibilities to organise shortcuts for all functions in firefox.

[Jason Spiro (jasonspiro)]

This bug also happens on my Ubuntu Linux PC [Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; fr; rv:1.8.1.2) Gecko/20060601 Firefox/2.0.0.2 (Ubuntu-edgy)]. So, you may want to change the OS field of this bug to All.

[Bugzilla-tuxmachine (bugzilla-tuxmachine)]

*** Bug 377574 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Rodrigo (publicurinal598)]

I'd stick with the Page Up/Page Down configuration because of the flexibility it gives. It seems that as late as the most recent firefox available on the feisty reps maintain this.

That said, I can confirm the lack of switching of tabs when a text field has focus. And it is, indeed, annoying.

[Msridhar (msridhar)]

*** Bug 307762 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Neil-httl (neil-httl)]

Created attachment 283704
Fix via tabbox capturing

There seem to be at least three approaches to this bug. This is the first.

[Neil-httl (neil-httl)]

Created attachment 283705
Fix via not stopping propagation

Alternatively we can allow the event to propagate so that tabbox.xml sees it.

The third option is not to process keys if the accelerator modifier is down.
That's likely to be a bigger patch, so I won't write it if one of these gets r+ ;-)

[Enn (enndeakin)]

I do think option 3 is more correct, as the autocomplete should be ignoring modified keys is shouldn't be handling, or should at least not call stopPropagation in that case. I do prefer option 2 over option 1 though.

[Jruderman (jruderman)]

*** Bug 404792 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Lam (lam-lac)]

Ping?

This hit me with SeaMonkey 2.0a1pre on Linux. Ctrl-Shift-Tab is so awkward I would be too ashamed to propose it to anyone and I can simply press down any arrow key to drop-down the text field (so no need to grab Ctrl-PgUp for that purpose, really).

Also, at least with SeaMonkey, pressing the arrows while being focused on the location bar makes it drop down, but Ctrl-PgUp switches tabs. I see the location bar as just an example of text entry, so this behavior is inconsistent.

[Enn (enndeakin)]

Comment on attachment 283705
Fix via not stopping propagation

Clear review requests based on my previous comments.

[Neil-httl (neil-httl)]

Created attachment 293330
Proposed patch

The two location bar autocomplete implementations differ in their choice of modifiers to ignore so I played safe and ignored all three.

[Dsicore (dsicore)]

+'ing and marking as P3.

[Neil-httl (neil-httl)]

Fix checked in.

[Philringnalda (philringnalda)]

*** Bug 344966 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[cameo (august-nick)]

I am a heavy Google Docs user, and ctrl-page up/down is the shortcut key to change worksheets within a workbook in a Google Spreadsheet. For that reason I would prefer ctrl-tab for switching tabs. Or even better, a screen in the preferences page that allows you to customize shortcut keys.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

On Tue, May 06, 2008 at 12:39:26PM -0000, cameo wrote:
> I am a heavy Google Docs user, and ctrl-page up/down is the shortcut key
> to change worksheets within a workbook in a Google Spreadsheet. For
> that reason I would prefer ctrl-tab for switching tabs. Or even better,
> a screen in the preferences page that allows you to customize shortcut
> keys.
>

if a form field has focus, switching tabs wont be the right thing to
do.

 status wontfix

 - Alexander

[James "Doc" Livingston (jrl)]

> if a form field has focus, switching tabs wont be the right thing to do.

That's debatable. As in the original case I reported, I wanted to switch to a tab a couple right of the one I was currently on - and it stopped on one of the intervening tabs because it happened to contain a text field, which doesn't sound right.

[Zeniko (zeniko)]

*** Bug 360693 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

This was released with the initial release of Firefox 3.0

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

Firefox 2 is EOL