Handling Enter key presses on Buttons in JavaFX

[Tomas Mikula]

On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 6:10 PM, Michael Berry <berry120 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 7 June 2016 at 23:04, Tomas Mikula <tomas.mikula at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> What about forgetting the whole notion of a "default button" and the only
>> effect of setting the default property to true being that the button will
>> start as focused?
>>
>> So I add a question:
>>
>> 3) Would anyone miss the "default button"?
>>
>
> Afraid I would - I find the visual difference of the default button rather
> useful.
>

The visual difference is also what is confusing when there is also a
focused button. Maybe they should then lose its visual distinction when a
different button is focused (at least in Jonathan's point 2) - non-OS X
platforms).

Tomas


> While it would be possible to just use CSS to style it differently, this
> (in my mind) would be a step backwards (and that's before the issues that
> would arise from a backwards-compatibility standpoint due to removing an
> existing property.)
>
> Michael
>
>
>>
>> Tomas
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 5:47 PM, Jonathan Giles <jonathan.giles at oracle.com
>> >
>> wrote:
>>
>> > Hi all,
>> >
>> > One thing I've been looking into recently is the issue of what the Enter
>> > key should do when it is pushed with regards to buttons in a UI where
>> one
>> > of those buttons is a 'default' button. There are number of Jira issues
>> on
>> > this topic, and I wanted to poll the community to understand its
>> opinions.
>> >
>> > The current situation is that the Enter key does not fire the focused
>> > Button. The Enter key is reserved for firing the 'default' Button in
>> the UI
>> > (i.e. if someone has created a Button instance with the default property
>> > set to true). A default button is rendered slightly differently (in
>> Modena
>> > it is blue for example). To fire the focused Button, the user must press
>> > the Space key.
>> >
>> > Tom Schindl filed a bug (JDK-8139510) that is a good example of the
>> > 'problem' this creates. In the bug report, a dialog is shown to the
>> user.
>> > In the dialog is an OK button and a Cancel button. The OK button has
>> been
>> > made the 'default' button. Regardless of which button has focus, the
>> Enter
>> > key always fires the OK button. The only way to fire the Cancel button
>> is
>> > via the Space key. This can be very confusing for users who have tabbed
>> > specifically to the 'Cancel' button and then pressed the Enter key,
>> only to
>> > find they unwittingly fired the 'OK' action.
>> >
>> > To me this has always been a little counter-intuitive, because of my
>> > heritage as a long-time Windows user. I believe Linux is much the same
>> as
>> > Windows. For others who grew up on Mac, I'm less sure on what people
>> expect
>> > (but it seems to be that the Enter key fires the default button, not the
>> > focused button, i.e. JavaFX current behavior matches what is expected
>> on OS
>> > X).
>> >
>> > What I'm proposing we do is to change the behavior as follows:
>> >
>> > 1) On OS X we do not change behavior at all - we keep the current 'Enter
>> > means default' and 'Space means focus' semantics.
>> >
>> > 2) On non-OS X platforms, we change the behavior so that Enter (and
>> Space)
>> > will fire the _focused_ key, if one is focused. If no Button is focused
>> > (e.g. focus is in a TextField, etc), then Enter will work as it
>> currently
>> > does and fire the default button, if one is specified. In short, default
>> > buttons will still be rendered blue to hint to the user that they are
>> the
>> > default button, but they will be less prevalently fired by Enter key
>> > presses - only when they also have focus.
>> >
>> > The two questions that I have are:
>> >
>> > 1) Will this confuse users when there is a behavior change (and
>> > presumably, this change will be made in JDK 9 and not backported to JDK
>> 8).
>> > If it will confuse users, is it still the right thing to do?
>> >
>> > 2) Do we want to have different behaviors for OS X and non-OS X? I'm a
>> > newly inducted member into the cult of Mac, and I don't yet have all my
>> > bearings sorted out, so I don't have a strong opinion here.
>> >
>> > Your thoughts, as always, are appreciated.
>> > -- Jonathan
>> >
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Thanks,
>
> Michael
>
>
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