Randomly switching from focus to browse mode in multi line edit boxes.

[nvaccessAuto]

Reported by kara_louise on 2011-11-24 21:36
When reading by character in a multi line edit field such as this one, NVDA will randomly switch from focus mode to browse mode, causing you to move to whichever element is in the direction you were going. Hitting the opposite arrow immediately after will put you back in the edit field with focus mode enabled, and the cursor will be in the same place before this occurred.

I have only seen this happen in firefox.
I originally thought it may happen when the cursor raps down a line, but it appears not to be the case.

[nvaccessAuto]

Comment 1 by jteh on 2011-11-24 21:57
To clarify, you're definitely not at the end of the text field when it switches to browse mode? Also, do you have Automatic focus mode for caret movement enabled (in NVDA menu -> Preferences -> Browse mode)?

[nvaccessAuto]

Comment 2 by kara_louise (in reply to comment 1) on 2011-11-24 22:54

Replying to jteh:

To clarify, you're definitely not at the end of the text field when it switches to browse mode? Also, do you have Automatic focus mode for caret movement enabled (in NVDA menu -> Preferences -> Browse mode)?

no, I was nowhere near the end of the edit box,and yes I do have that option checked.

[nvaccessAuto]

Comment 3 by jteh on 2011-11-25 01:49
When Automatic focus mode for caret movement is enabled, NVDA determines whether to switch to browse mode based on whether pressing a cursor key failed to move within a short timeout, which normally indicates the edge of a field. The only explanation i can come up with is that moving the cursor in Firefox on your system is sometimes rather slow, so the timeout is too short and NVDA thinks the cursor has failed to move when it is just taking a while.

The only thing you can do for now is disable this setting. Note that you can still leave Automatic focus mode for focus changes enabled.

We'll need to investigate raising this timeout without causing too much of a performance hit.
Changes:
Milestone changed from None to near-term

[nvaccessAuto]

Comment 4 by kara_louise (in reply to comment 3) on 2011-11-25 02:29
Replying to jteh:

When Automatic focus mode for caret movement is enabled, NVDA determines whether to switch to browse mode based on whether pressing a cursor key failed to move within a short timeout, which normally indicates the edge of a field. The only explanation i can come up with is that moving the cursor in Firefox on your system is sometimes rather slow, so the timeout is too short and NVDA thinks the cursor has failed to move when it is just taking a while.

The only thing you can do for now is disable this setting. Note that you can still leave Automatic focus mode for focus changes enabled.

We'll need to investigate raising this timeout without causing too much of a performance hit.

Oh I see, Thanks, I'll do that for now.

[bhavyashah]

@jcsteh As noted in #1958 (comment), has the raising of timeout been reconsidered ever since?

[jcsteh]

The timeout was raised in #7201, so this should effectively be fixed.