FireFox does not support keyboard bookmark seletion.

[David G. Pickett]

Unlike in other browsers and O/S, the bookmark menu does not respond to the keyboard, making navigation of long, sorted bookmarks lists very manual for high letters. Usually, you can type the first letter one or more times and jump/step down the list of bookmarks starting with that letter.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: firefox 9.0.1+build1-0ubuntu0.11.10.2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-14.23-generic 3.0.9
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-14-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
AddonCompatCheckDisabled: False
AlsaVersion: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.24.
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
ArecordDevices:
 **** List of CAPTURE Hardware Devices ****
 card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: AD198x Analog [AD198x Analog]
   Subdevices: 2/2
   Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
   Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC0: dpickett 1948 F.... pulseaudio
BuildID: 20111228084940
CRDA: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
Card0.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:0 'Intel'/'HDA Intel at 0xdfffc000 irq 68'
   Mixer name : 'Analog Devices AD1984A'
   Components : 'HDA:11d4194a,10280293,00100400'
   Controls : 34
   Simple ctrls : 20
Channel: release
Date: Tue Jan 17 11:52:42 2012
ForcedLayersAccel: False
IfupdownConfig:
 auto lo
 iface lo inet loopback
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04.3 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20110720.1)
IpRoute:
 default via 192.168.9.1 dev eth0 proto static
 169.254.0.0/16 dev eth0 scope link metric 1000
 192.168.9.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.9.73 metric 1
IwConfig:
 lo no wireless extensions.

 eth0 no wireless extensions.
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/sh
Profiles: Profile0 (Default) - LastVersion=9.0.1/20111228084940 (Running)
RfKill:

RunningIncompatibleAddons: False
SourcePackage: firefox
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-11-28 (50 days ago)
dmi.bios.date: 03/09/2009
dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.bios.version: A01
dmi.board.name: 0K095G
dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.board.version: A01
dmi.chassis.type: 7
dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvrA01:bd03/09/2009:svnDellInc.:pnPrecisionWorkStationT3500:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0K095G:rvrA01:cvnDellInc.:ct7:cvr:
dmi.product.name: Precision WorkStation T3500
dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.

[Sasa Paporovic (melchiaros)]

Are you sure this is a report for Ubuntu.

Mozilla has is own bugtracker with an enhancement option. And they let not tell what todo by Ubuntu, so it is best when you bring this to them, when you do not thing that this behaviour is OS specific.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

This is a limitation of the menubar

[David G. Pickett (dpickett)]

At a high level view, it is still a bug. Activity on other tabs should not affect a tab. Presenting a menu from ouse action that cannot be navigated by that mouse is just cruel and silly.

I suppose that in place of displaying a menu you cannot navigate, it could context-switch you to the windowand tab with an open dialog. However, you may be seeking an answer in this current tab to the question in the first dialog, so then your only workaround would be to have many brands of browser open, which is more sad.

[David G. Pickett (dpickett)]

Wait, that is for my other bug. No erase/edit button here?

This behavior should be added to the menubar. The usual behavior elsewhere is very useful. I will say the scroll rate is very good, but you are now more dependent on sorting n new bookmarks, which in Mozilla is on another window !

I would go to Mozilla with my problems, but I got here with the "Report a Problem ..." choice on the Firefox Help Menu. So, apparently, I am here because someone promoted you to take over their bug report function.

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

(That you can't erase/edit your own bug comment is bug 80895.)

So the Firefox behavior seems to be this: There are no access keys for any item (not even the static ones like "Bookmark This Page"). But typing any character will highlight the next item, after the currently highlighted item, that starts with that character.

For example, if you have three bookmarks in the menu, "Aardvark", "Abacus", and "Bobbie", opening the menu and typing "ab" won't highlight "Abacus", it will highlight "Aardvark" then "Bobbie". But opening the menu and typing just "b" won't highlight "Bobbie", it will highlight "Bookmark This Page". Typing "b" repeatedly will highlight "Bookmark All Tabs", then "Bookmarks Toolbar", then finally "Bobbie".

This is rather crude behavior, but perhaps we could copy it for menus that contain no items with access keys.

[David G. Pickett (dpickett)]

Yes, so you can review all items beginning with b or B by just hitting b, even if they are not sorted. This could be a big help to access-challenged, as well as the long-bookmark-list-obsessive.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[JohnWashington (ubuntu-johnwash)]

David, for the avoidance of doubt, the way you propose Firefox should work is indeed the way it used to work and the way it still does work if you get rid of Unity. See my bug report bug #1004994, submitted in May (when I was unaware of your bug report), which today has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. It's still well worth reading bug#1004994, because it makes it very clear that the cause of the problem is a lack of functionality in globalmenu-extension.

As I understand it (and unfortunately I don't know how to put this tactfully), the author of globalmenu-extension is saying that it's not his problem because other parts of Unity don't offer the facility he needs, yet he's not prepared to take ownership of the problem and pressure those other designers/developers to provide what he needs.

And so this bug has languished for 7 months. Perhaps that's because those who routinely use the mouse feel that this issue is a rather academic one. But for those of us who keep our hands on the keyboard almost all of the time, and who switch to other Linux versions and even other operating systems, but still consider Firefox the best browser on all of them, it's a damnable irritation that Unity is the one place this doesn't work. Indeed for those who are disabled in some way that prevents use of a mouse I imagine this breakage is infuriating.

As a workaround you could try going into Firefox menu Tools | Add-ons and disabling globalmenu-extension. That worked for me on 12.04, and worked for a while on 12.10 alpha, but then other issues a month or two back prevented me from running 12.10's updates, so I can't say if that's still true. Of course, disabling globalmenu-extension will reverse some of the menu placement that Unity tries to rejig.

Or, of course, you could throw out Unity and choose one of the other desktops.