it'd be good from an accessibility pov to be able to switch focus between the category tree and the right-hand panel of the Preferences dialog. unsure how feasible this would be. if it is, it could also be applied to similar dialogs such as the Mailnews Account Setup. should this bug reside in the prefs component, or should it go over to toolkit?

suggested shortcut[s]: use the same one[s] used for switching btwn frames/mailnews panes: f6 and shift+f6 [which would be redundant with ctrl+tab and ctrl+shift+tab].

1.0, keyboard nav

I would just put an accesskey on "Category", so the user can press Alt+C to get to that from the dialog. To get from the category pane to the right hand part of the dialog, just press Tab. Is there a bug for the fact that, after you tab out of the category side, you can end up in no man's land for a while until you keep tabbing?

>Is there a bug for the fact that, after you tab out of the category side, you >can end up in no man's land for a while until you keep tabbing? Yes, bug 64052.

I think that where a top-level control in a window is used to determine the presence or absence (as opposed to just the enabled/disabled status) of other controls, (Shift+)Ctrl+Tab should be used consistently to access this control. For example: * (Shift+)Ctrl+Tab should cycle through the tabs in tabbed dialogs. * (Shift+)Ctrl+Tab should cycle between the content area, the address field, and the Sidebar in Navigator (since the address field and the Sidebar can be used to determine what URL is loaded, which in turn determines what form controls are available in the content area). * (Shift+)Ctrl+Tab should toggle between the category pane and the prefs panels themselves in the prefs dialog. In any case, controls such as these should not have accesskeys, because that prevents the same mnemonic from being used in *any* of the subsidiary panels. (I bet there's several panels where we use the `C' accesskey, and we probably use all the other letters in the word `Category' in various panels too.)

mpt, thanks for the interesting comment. The only problem I have with what you say, is that Ctrl+Tab is much less discoverable in a situation like this. I don't think anyone would figure that our unless they specifically read the keyboard docs. On the other hand, Alt+C for Category is easy to figure out, because the C would be underlined.

You can't give the `Category:' label the `C' accesskey (at least, not without changing it in every prefs panel which uses `C' for something else), so how easy it would be to figure out is a moot point. As for discoverability, I don't think it needs to be very discoverable. If you don't know about Control+Tab, you'll just use Tab, and you'll eventually get there. But if you're the sort of person who relies on keyboard navigation (e.g. someone who can't use the mouse), then Control+Tab will be one of the things you learn when reading up on the keyboard shortcuts Mozilla provides.

over to vishy to find an owner

->ben, clearing mozilla1.0 target for retargetting in MachV if the current method (tab key) is insufficient.

need to hook up an accesskey to 'Category'.

-> Andreww

-> Andreww

This shouldn't block bug 18575, now that bug 64052 has been fixed. Tab will cycle through the contents of the prefs dialog repeatedly, without losing focus on any hidden controls.

Is this bug even valid anymore? The preferences window no longer uses a category tree; it uses (fully keyboard accessible) "panes".

This was about Seamonkey -- it doesn't apply to Firefox or Thunderbird.

F6 (or Ctrl+Tab) brings focus back on category tree, but second press doesn't returns back to right pane. Not sure, this how it supposed to be, or it is unfinished Build identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:10.0a1) Gecko/20111017 Firefox/10.0a1 SeaMonkey/2.7a1

Where should it return to? The item you left? The first one? You can always leave the category tree by Tab. (Actually, the internal workings of the preferences panel changed since this bug was filed: in the past, the pref panels were real iframes, thus some focussing/tabbing problems occured. These days, category tree and panels are in the same document, so the proposed change isn't very helpful anymore (if it ever was).) Closing as WONTFIX.