Keyboard and mouse inconsitensies issues

Hello, I just downloaded Tab Center in Test PIlot and wanted to try keyboard navigation as it is the most frequent way that I use to work with tabs.

I’m really liking the search feature (the shortcut ctrl-shift-L is really handy) but I found some inconsistencies in the behaviour of the Tab Center sidebar (set to auto-hide):

Most important problems:

  1. I did not find any way to go to the results (using only keyboard) after typing a search with the keyboard shortcut. Maybe pressing enter should put the focus on the results and pressing Enter again should go to the selected item (with arrow keys or tab to go through multiple results)

  2. After a tab search initiated via the keyboard shortcut (ctrl-shift-L) as I click on a result, the side bar stay open (because it was opened with keyboard). The only way to close it is by typing again ctrl-shift-L. This feels very strange, maybe the Escape key could be used to close the side bar.
    SIde note: when there is no search term entered or when the current tab is included in the search results, pressing tab enable keyboard navigation in the tab list. This behaviour could be applied to the first search result for example.

  3. Same issue when the side bar is shown with mouse-over, when I type a search, if the mouse goes outside the sidebar it closes and the search bar clears. Maybe the addon should detect if the user is typing and not close the bar until it is finished typing.

Minor inconsistencies:

  1. When searching for a tab and pressing the tab key, the focus goes into the address bar but pressing shift-tab does not return on the search bar, it has to be pressed twice. (I believe the focus goes on the hidden lock icon on the left of the address bar).

ctrl-shift-L is the shortcut to toggle the sidebar open and closed. It focuses the search bar as a convenience, but that’s not its primary purpose.

We suggest using ctrl-tab (and ctrl-shift-tab) to navigate among results after searching.

We have definitely gone back and forth over the behaviour when the user moves the mouse out of the sidebar while a search is active. Our conclusion was that it would be more confusing to not see all your tabs when you were done searching (as evidenced by moving the mouse out of the results) than the current behaviour.

You’re right that we can probably do something a little better here, though.

Finally, the tab/shift-tab is an inconsistency, but I’m not sure we can do anything about it. :slight_frown:

Thanks for your comments!

Thank you for your answer. ctrl-tab works for my use case.

I’m looking forward to see the improvements that you can come up with!