[Bug 894048] [NEW] Keyboard accelerators not working correctly in Firefox and Thunderbird after upgrade from 11.04 (Natty) to 11.10 (Oneiric)

[Doug Morse]

Public bug reported:

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)

** Affects: thunderbird (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New


** Tags: amd64 apport-bug oneiric running-unity

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Mozilla
Bugs, which is subscribed to thunderbird in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/894048

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

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/thunderbird/+bug/894048/+subscriptions