Tab navigation enhancements

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Suggest adding the following enhancements to navigation of tabs:

ctrl-tab should wrap around from the last tab to the first, vice versa for shift-ctrl-tab

ctrl-pgup/ctrl-pgdn should also switch tab, per Windows convetion

rolling the mousewheel over the tab bar should also switch tab -- not convention, but used in a few apps and very useful :)

[Tim Kosse]

Windows convention for ctrl+pgup and ctrl+pgdown is to move the focus rectangle inside list and tree controls.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

I'm still wondering why every ticket I file defaults to Critical -- I missed that one. On my home PC (just got home), the Priority popup defaults to Normal, but switches to Critical if you click it. (Firefox 3.5.3 in Win XP)

ctrl-pgup/down is also conventionally mapped to switch tab in effectively everything in Windows, from Microsoft to GTK+/Win32.

If you're correct, then we have an interesting design conflict here.

[Tim Kosse]

Since tree and list controls were in FileZilla longer than tabs, they have priority. Conflict solved ;)

[Daniel Beardsmore]

Would you be so kind as to explain what ctrl-pg up/down do exactly in a tree view? For example, I've just opened NTBackup, which has a tabbed interface, and two of the tabs contain tree controls. The only thing I can get ctrl-pg up/down to do, is change tab, which is precisely what I would expect to happen. This happens whether or not an item in one of the tree panes is focused.

I've not got ctrl-pg up/down to do anything in any other tree control in any program either. Tree controls in my awareness are navigated and explored using +, -, *, left and right arrow.

If I go to the local directory tree in FileZilla, click on a folder, and press ctrl-pg up, all that happens is the address bar is focused, as if shift-tab had been pressed. ctrl-pg down acts as though tab was pressed, focusing the directory list box.

[Tim Kosse]

Forget about the trees, focus on the list controls. There ctrl+pgup/down clearly moves the focus rectangle. You can try it in Explorer.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

So it does nothing in tree controls?

In list controls, holding down ctrl is intended for performing selections via the keyboard. Funnily enough, NTBackup still uses ctrl pgup/down to change tab, overruling selection. However, keyboard selections cause a conflict between using space to toggle highlighting, and using space to toggle the checkboxes.

Very few programs actually use both list controls AND tabs.

[Tim Kosse]

Closing.

• Ctrl+Tab wraparound implemented
• Ctrl+PgUp/Down already used elsewhere
• In order to use wheel events, tab controls need to be selected first, e.g. by clicking a tab. If you need to do that you can just as well click the right tab.