Keyboard accelerators not working correctly in Firefox and Thunderbird after upgrade from 11.04 (Natty) to 11.10 (Oneiric)

[Doug Morse]

Hi,

After upgrading from Natty (11.04) to Oneiric (11.10), the keyboard accelerators for firefox-globalmenu and thunderbird-globalmenu have stopped working correctly.

Behavior:

When pressing a keyboard accelerator, for example, Alt-F for the File menu, for the first time after a window is created, it is not possible to then continue pressing accelerator keys in the submenu. This makes using makes using combinations of keys to access menu items impossible -- the only work around is to then use the mouse or press the down arrow once for the purpose of highlighting the first item in the choosen submenu, at which point that (and only that) submenu's accelerators become available. However, the problem also applies to subsubmenus, subsubsubmenus, etc.

Oddly, once a submenu has been used one, then the keyboard accelerators do work for it for as long as that window exists (at least as far as I can tell; I haven't checked globalmenu's "memory" for this for subsubmenus, etc.).

This behavior is particular problematic when one is constantly creating new windows. For example, every time I compose a new message in Thunderbird, it creates a new window for that purpose. Because I prefer to send messages in both HTML and plain text, I need to, at some point during message composition, access the menu item Options -> Format -> Plain and Rich (HTML) text. The sequence of keyboard accelerators for this is Alt-P, F, L (for each menu component, respectively). This keyboard accelerator sequence has always worked for me up until Oneiric (11.10). Now it no longer does, and it's quite frustrating, as I use all sorts of keyboard accelerator sequences in both Thunderbird and Firefox. This Thunderbird message composition highlights the problem particularly well, because every time I compose a message, a new window is created, and thus the accelerators don't work each time. Even with more persistent windows, such as the main Thunderbird or Firefox windows I keep open, I can't keep up with whether I've already accessed a particular submenu or not, so I basically give up on using accelerators in either one of these applications, which are two of the four applications I use most.

This problem does not appear for other applications, at least as far as I can tell. I have tested both gvim and TexMakerX and keyboard accelerator sequences seem to work fine consistently for both of them.

Expected behavior:

Sequences of keyboard accelerators should always work in both Thunderbird and Firefox with globalmenu enabled (the default).

Thanks as always,
Doug

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: firefox-globalmenu 8.0+build1-0ubuntu0.11.10.3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-13.22-generic 3.0.6
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-13-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
Date: Wed Nov 23 09:44:41 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release amd64 (20110427.1)
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: firefox
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-10-14 (40 days ago)

[Doug Morse (dm-dougmorse)]

I should add: I'm pretty sure this problem has existed since I first upgrade to Oneiric (11.10). Regardless, it certainly is a problem now. Here are what I believe to be the relevant packages and their versions:

morse@s3 ~> dpkg -l | egrep "(thunderbird|firefox)"
ii firefox 8.0+build1-0ubuntu0.11.10.3 Safe and easy web browser from Mozilla
ii firefox-globalmenu 8.0+build1-0ubuntu0.11.10.3 Unity appmenu integration for Firefox
ii firefox-gnome-support 8.0+build1-0ubuntu0.11.10.3 Safe and easy web browser from Mozilla - GNOME support
ii firefox-locale-en 8.0+build1-0ubuntu0.11.10.3 English language pack for Firefox
ii thunderbird 7.0.1+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu1 Email, RSS and newsgroup client with integrated spam filter
ii thunderbird-globalmenu 7.0.1+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu1 Unity appmenu integration for Thunderbird
ii thunderbird-gnome-support 7.0.1+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu1 Email, RSS and newsgroup client - GNOME support
morse@s3 ~>

[Oliver Schonrock (oliver-realtsp)]

Yes, can confirm that this bug exists for me too..and yes it is quite frustrating for those of us that like menu access keys and dislike mice. Doug Morses discription is very precise and matches what I see.

I can also note that the global menu in chromium does not seem support access keys at all? After window first loaded or at any time?

Oliver

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Eric Nelson (eric-nelson-c)]

Still present in Precise:

ericn@ericsam:~$ dpkg -l | egrep "(thunderbird|firefox)"
ii firefox 17.0+build2-0ubuntu0.12.04.1 Safe and easy web browser from Mozilla
ii firefox-globalmenu 17.0+build2-0ubuntu0.12.04.1 Unity appmenu integration for Firefox
ii firefox-gnome-support 17.0+build2-0ubuntu0.12.04.1 Safe and easy web browser from Mozilla - GNOME support
ii firefox-locale-en 17.0+build2-0ubuntu0.12.04.1 English language pack for Firefox
ii thunderbird 17.0+build2-0ubuntu0.12.04.1 Email, RSS and newsgroup client with integrated spam filter
ii thunderbird-globalmenu 17.0+build2-0ubuntu0.12.04.1 Unity appmenu integration for Thunderbird
ii thunderbird-gnome-support 17.0+build2-0ubuntu0.12.04.1 Email, RSS and newsgroup client - GNOME support
ii thunderbird-locale-en 1:17.0+build2-0ubuntu0.12.04.1 English language pack for Thunderbird
ii thunderbird-locale-en-us 1:17.0+build2-0ubuntu0.12.04.1 Transitional English language pack for Thunderbird

[JaSauders (jasauders)]

Kubuntu 12.10, 64 bit. Thunderbird 17.0.3. Same issue here.

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to review all reported bugs in a timely manner. You reported this bug some time ago and there have been many changes in Ubuntu and Thunderbird since that time.

Do you still see a problem related to the one that you reported in a currently supported version of Ubuntu? Please let us know if you do and in which version of Ubuntu otherwise this report can be left to expire in approximately 60 days time.

Thank you for helping make Ubuntu better.

Paul White
[Ubuntu Bug Squad]

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for thunderbird (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]