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When tabbed pane of top components is focused and left/right arrow is pressed then expected behavior is that tabbed pane is switched to previous/next tab and the tab is focused so that user can use arrows again. But sometimes (in editor) after switching tabs focus moves to top component so that it is not possible to switch too tabs in a row. This was reported against explorer and fixed in NbMainExplorer (http://openide.netbeans.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=16192). But it should be fixed on tabbed top components container level.
long time ago this was implemented as a feature I think, coming from nbui discussion :-)
I think this is as designed, because shortcuts Alt+arrows serve for that purpose (to cycle between tabs) and it is working ok for me here.
Yes, Alt+Arrows serve the purpose. But when tabbed pane is focused it is possible with screen reader to read tab names and that is why it is better to navigate in tabbed pane tabs when the tabbed pane is focused. So when a tabbed TC container is focused then arrows should allow to switch more tabs in a row. In current state it sometimes moves focus to TC and sometimes doesn't. Try to open different TCs (source editor, image viewer, bundle properties table) in editor window and use arrows in focused tabbed pane. It seems that whether focus is moved or not depends on TC. It should not. Moving focus to TC after selecting new tab by mouse click is right, but doing that when using keyboard arrows is not.
*** Issue 16402 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
*** Issue 17182 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
*** Issue 17183 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Increase priority a bit. Its important because of accessibility. This bug could be really bewildering too for that case, where user has explorer & property view docked together.
> So when a tabbed TC container is focused then arrows should allow to > switch more tabs in a row. In current state it sometimes moves focus > to TC and sometimes doesn't.. the focus is moved to the top component if the component declares that it accepts focus. Editor does, image doesn't. That's the difference. > Moving focus to TC after selecting new tab by mouse click is right, > but doing that when using keyboard arrows is not. Unfortunately it's very likely that it's impossible to distinguish these two cases. You must make the choice, eithera11y compliance or usability. (Irony intended :-(
Target milestone -> 3.3.1.
raising priority, should be tried to be adressed to 3.3.1
before anyone's going to fix this bug, please take a look at bug 17958. We have to decide if accessibility really requires tab handles to be focusable. If the answer is yes, then bug 17958 is probably unavoidable (not only in Explorer as it is now).
I'm not able to fix this bug, at least for now (for 3.3.1). As Trung correctly pointed out, there is no good way how to distinguish between mouse and keyboard triggered tab handler change. I'm marking this as later, because correct solution exist I believe - to write whole TabbedPaneUI ourselves (we already have one - for example ArrowsTabbedPaneUI - however needs to be refactored for jdk 1.4) and handle transferring of focus more flexibly. Other chance may be to convince Swing to enhance API for JTabbedPane to allow for knwing trigger of state change.
changing target milestone
reopening..
Re-evaluation: I don't know how this can be fixed on our side. Closing as wontfix, without Swing support for distinguishing between mouse and keyboard gestures we're lost.
Resolved for 3.4.x or earlier, no new info since then -> verified.
Resolved for 3.4.x or earlier, no new info since then -> closing.