File menu is selected when switching to the Arduino IDE via Alt + Tab [imported]

[cmaglie]

This is Issue 977 moved from a Google Code project.
Added by 2012-07-07T23:51:36.000Z by AgentFri...@gmail.com.
Please review that bug for more context and additional comments, but update this bug.

Original labels: Type-Defect, Priority-Medium, Component-IDE

Original description

What steps will reproduce the problem?

1. Press Alt-Tab to switch to another app, then Alt-tab back
2. Or try to press Alt-F

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

1. Alt-Tabbing twice to switch away, then back, to Arduino Studio leaves you in the application menu and you have to press Alt or Escape to get back to the editor.
2. Support the normal Windows keyboard shortcuts for opening up the menus. Is this really hard to do for multi-target programs? Isn't there something similar in Linux GUIs?

What version of the Arduino software are you using? On what operating
system? Which Arduino board are you using?
1.0.1 on Windows XP

Please provide any additional information below.
Things like Alt-F/A for save as, Alt-F/S for save, and Alt-F/O for open are so universally supported in Windows apps that it's very distracting when they don't work. Usually, first-letters of menu item names automatically work w/o any extra effort...

Thanks for considering.

---

EDIT 2018-04-01 @per1234:
Strike out completed feature request component (the bug report component remains unresolved).

[ffissore]

ALT+F and other mnemonics added

[per1234]

@cmaglie I'm reopening this issue because it consists of a bug report (menu being selected when switching to the IDE window via Alt + Tab) and a feature request (Alt + letter keyboard shortcuts for menus). The latter was resolved by aef835b but the bug was never fixed so this issue should not have been closed.

Steps to reproduce the bug:
(Using Arduino IDE 1.9.0-beta build 38 with Windows 10 64 bit)

1. Start the Arduino IDE and any other application.
2. Press Alt + Tab to switch to the Arduino IDE window from another window (not another Arduino IDE window from the same instance). The File menu is selected, as it would be if you pressed the Alt key when an Arduino IDE window was open.

Note that as you switch back and forth from the other application window to the IDE window the File menu is alternately selected and unselected.

I have never encountered this behavior with any other application.

This bug makes it extremely difficult to work efficiently because you are typing in the Arduino IDE, switch to another window (like a reference page in a browser), then back to the IDE and expect to be able to resume typing but instead you're in the menu and your keystrokes are doing nothing until you press Esc or Alt.

The bug does not occur when switching between windows of the same instance of the Arduino IDE. It does occur when switching between a different application or even a different instance of the IDE.

[facchinm]

Hi @per1234 ,
I tested on Windows VMs (7 and 10) and I was not able to reproduce the issue. Going back and forth with alt+tab does not trigger the File menu selection. To trigger it, I need to press Alt again, after releasing it for the first time.
I don't have any idea about what can be causing it, maybe different keyboard layouts?

[per1234]

I'm using US keyboard layout. This problem occurred for me with two different computers, Windows 7 and 10, going all the way back to the oldest IDE version I have installed: 1.0.5-r2.

I just discovered that the problem only occurs when I only hold Alt + Tab for a very short amount of time when switching windows. If I hold the keys longer then the Arduino IDE's File menu is not selected.

Screencast of the issue:

Note that Firefox's File menu was never selected despite me doing the same thing to switch windows each time.

[facchinm]

Thanks, probably the key is pressing the combination very briefly. I'll try reproducing it but I'm not very confident it can be solved by us (it looks more like a Java glitch).

[per1234]

The problem does not occur with the other Java-based application I use: RSSOwl. I'm sure I'm using some other Java programs, that's just the one that comes immediately to my mind.

[per1234]

I can no long reproduce this, even using the old IDE versions I was using at the time of the report. So there must have been some external change in my system that resolved the issue. Since we haven't had any other reports of this, it's surely a very rare bug even if it can still occur under unknown specific circumstances, so I'll close this as solved once again.