Support keyboard navigation of the QuickFolders toolbar

[RealRaven2000]

Support keyboard navigation of the QuickFolders toolbar - currently we can only use either the mouse to click on a QuickFolders tab or (if the option is enabled) use one of the number shortcuts ALT+0 .. Alt+9 to go to the first 10 folders.

This is not useful to users with movement disabilities or visual impairments. I would like the full functionality available to users with screen readers.

[RealRaven2000]

Here is a test version:

QuickFolders-mx-6.10pre128.zip

Supports using Tab to move through the following elements (toolbarbuttons):

QuickFolders label => quickJump buttons => first QuickFolders Tab

• the tabs can then be navigated using the cursor keys ArrowLeft and ArrowRight.
• Use Enter to open a folder
• Use the contextmenu key to open the dropdown menu
• Use F2 to rename the tab.

To add folders to the toolbar navigate to the folder tree, use the contextmenu and go to the bottom of commands until you find "Add folder to QuickFolders toolbar...". this was implemented in #550.

Open Issues

Currently I am having trouble with the Recent Folders Tab, it doesn't really seem to be integrated with the navigation of the other folders. Also there are other elements (such as the reading list) that aren't currently navigateable with Tab - I will have to investigate first how to make them useful for screen readers.

Also the QuickFolders label (which is the first element in the toolbar) can be used to open the QF main menu (or tools menu) but we currently require a number of cursor-down until we reach the first command (QuickFolders Options). This will be improved in future versions.

[RealRaven2000]

Fixed the dropdown on the QuickFolders label. Turns out we cannot use collapsed to hide menu items (and possibly buttons) from keyboard focus! So I made a helper function QuickFolders.Interface.showElement() to deal with it.

QuickFolders-mx-6.10pre146.zip

---

To try out this version, download the zip file and then drag it into Thunderbird Add-ons Manager (without extracting)
for users of screenreader you can also install this via the tools button after the "Find more addons" search text. activate the button with Enter then chose the 3rd menu entry "install addon from file...". Then select the zip file to install.

[RealRaven2000]

Another version - I added keyboard support for accessing the reading list and the recent folders tab:

QuickFolders-mx-6.10pre151.zip

first access of the toolbar tab buttons is still a little quirky - the first QuickFolder gets the tab focus (even though recent folders is displayed before it, if it is configured as being visible) - one can then use cursor keys, ArrowRight to navigate the other QuickFolders Tabs and ArrowLeft to get to the Recent Folders. So one might miss out on Recent folders if one didn't try the ArrowLeft from the first QuickFolder.

---

To try out this version, download the zip file and then drag it into Thunderbird Add-ons Manager (without extracting)
for users of screenreader you can also install this via the tools button after the "Find more addons" search text. activate the button with Enter then chose the 3rd menu entry "install addon from file...". Then select the zip file to install.

[RealRaven2000]

Implemented in 6.10. - Published 17/03/2025.

However leaving this open as i bet there will be modifications / improvements.

[joomlafun]

Hi, I've just updated to 6.10 ; but on TB 128.5.2esr (64 bits), however after I click on any tab the arrow won't work to navigate left or right.
I'm also on Fedora 41, KDE 6.3

[RealRaven2000]

Hi, I've just updated to 6.10 ; but on TB 128.5.2esr (64 bits), however after I click on any tab the arrow won't work to navigate left or right. I'm also on Fedora 41, KDE 6.3

I think for some reason just "clicking" on a tab doesn't actually set the keyboard focus to the toolbar. I am not quite sure why, but you can tab to it. Did it behave differently beforehand? By the way to go to "neighboring tabs" the official navigation was ALT+Left and ALT+Right, but I think that's also a little broken...

I did a bit of work today to improve the keyboard focus, try this one:

QuickFolders-mx-6.10.1pre19.zip

• added key focus programmatically ton the clicked folder (I still need a keyboard only method to focus the toolbar itself, planning to use a single key such as Q or Shift+Q)
• added reader support for reading out the name and the unread / total counts (currently English only) according to settings
• planned: a setting to suppress screen reader reading out the tooltip texts of the folders (it gets a little much)