Ben Ruppel writes:
> Before things get out of hand, I wanted to take this to the newsgroups
> and see what others think. The bug basically argues (as far as I
> understand) that once the autocomplete dropdown pops us when you start
> typing an url, hitting tab will ignore it and go to page elements or
> whatever. In order to choose an entry, you would have to use the arrow
> keys on your keyboard.
As long as you're taking opinions: I've been using galeon a lot more,
and mozilla a lot less, since the autocomplete popup started grabbing
my mouse and keyboard focus every time I type anything in the urlbar.
I'd like to disable it completely, or at least disable its focus
grabbing so that I can click or type somewhere else. The focus-
grabbing autocomplete dropdown is a huge step backward in usability,
especially since there's no way to disable it, and has driven me to
seek other browsers.
> First: (A)In order to get to autocomplete entries, one would have to
> remove his/her hands from the standard typing position on the keyboard
> to reach the arrows. For good typists, it would be faster and just as
> easy to type the rest of the entry. Right now, it's tab, enter, and
> you're there, but this bug would remove that ease of use.
That's a reasonable argument, and I can see including it in the tab
order -- but not usurping the tab order. Now, once the dropdown
appears, you can no longer tab to the page at all -- tab cycles
between the urlbar and the dropdown without ever going on to
other elements.
> First: (B)The autocomplete dropdown has built in searches. If you want
> to search for a phrase, you can just type in a phrase and hit tab to
> search. You'd loose this too if this "bug" were "fixed".
There's a bug open for adding a key binding for search, which would
solve that problem.
> Third: Autocomplete only pops up if you started typing an url. why
> would you start typing an url and THEN decide to tab to other page
> elements? It is more likely that you would want to select an
To go back to the page and scroll down to get more information
about what you want to search for?
> autocomplete url once you start typing than it is that you would want to
> go to page elements. We should take care of the more likely case.
>
> Fourth: If for some reason you don't want to tab through autocomplete
> entries once you've started typing, you can hit escape (which is very
> close to tab and you don't have to move your hands from the keyboard)
I have four keyboards around me right now: two HP PCs, one mac and one
SGI. On all four, Esc is way up in the upper left, nearly the same
distance from the home position as the arrow keys are. Admittedly
I have small hands -- can some people really hit the esc key without
moving off the home position?
...Akkana
