Re:Please Don't Steal My Focus
by earthboundkid on Friday December 07, 2007 @06:19AM
(#86962)
The problem is that Firefox on Mac is a second class citizen, and it uses modal dialog boxes.
As for the Esc thing, I can't recall a case where a Mac native application didn't press "Cancel" when I hit escape. I think there might be problems with ported applications though.
Happened to my wife yesterday - she was trying to use the BART website to print herself a one-day parking pass. She was using an OSX 10.4 powerbook with Firefox and choose Save As PDF. Unfortunately something went wrong with Firefox at that moment and another modal dialog appeared.
This dialog unfortunately obscured the first one but for some reason did not have the focus. She freaked out because now she couldn't safely quit the application and she was afraid that she wouldn't be able to get back to the site without having to pay again.
Luckily the number for her parking pass was visible on the screen so she recorded that and called the help line.
I don't think this is a browser issue, and I think the only solution is to insist that all modal dialogs implement the ESC key as Cancel. The vi editor got this right 30 years ago: you should always be allowed to press ESC to get out of whatever mode you're in.