GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 643853
Combobox dropdown items are not selectable using keyboard
Last modified: 2017-08-24 22:25:42 UTC
I'm using Ubuntu and I hope Canonical hasn't screwed this one up. 1. The most evident place, where such a behavior is missing, is in System → Preferences → Keyboard 2. Try to add a new keyboard layout, you have to pick a country from a long list, make it active (open with mouse and pick one, it remains selected or navigate using Tab) 3. Type "E" + "s" on keyboard for "Estonia", nothing happens. 4. Click the dialog open again (or press space/enter) 5. Type again "E" + "s" and see still nothing happens. IMHO this feature should be in GTK+.
While this problem is annoying for most Gnome users, it's especially difficult for the blind who navigate Gnome using Orca. Most people just grab the scroll bar with the mouse and scroll until the item they want is in view, and then click on it. A blind user has to arrow down through the whole list. I would love to see this fixed.
See also bug #53579, where this behavior for combo boxes was originally recommended back in 2001...
"Annoying"? This is necessary for real life applications. Has this really been an issue for 13 years? To have to scroll down 150 categories or 1000 products in a list is really enough to make one stick to Windows. Trying to develop a simple application is a nightmare when it comes to comboboxes. For some reason the use of a scroll-bar is controlled by the theme even though the application developer is the one who knows what form the data takes (See "appears-as-list" where the description says it will make it look like a menu or a list - however the only way anyone knows what a menu or list looks like are those that may have used GTK2 - if you start with GTK3 you are lost in the wilderness).
Surely this bug/omission whatever must have been confirmed by now? If not can we please get some action to get it sorted out or it's status updated - whilst it may originally have occurred in GTK2 it relates to a significant problem which is happening now in GTK3. At least it would be good to have an updated comment from development.
BTW Running Debian Jessie, GTK 3.10.7
Would love to see an update on this. Recently updated everything from gtk 2.6.9 to 2.24.10 (major :P), and stumbled into this bug. Cant believe it has been open since early 2011, almost four years now.
We won't add this to gtk2, which is in deep maintenance mode now. gtk3 is the place where this kind of feature addition can happen, but the bug can easily stay open another 4 years, if nobody volunteers to work on this feature.
I wonder if this feature would be better placed in GtkMenu. Anyway, I'd like to take a look at it eventually. Currently I just put keypress handling on the ComboBox itself, but to use that, the menu must be closed, as otherwise it grabs input - hence what I wrote above. This isn't much more useful, really.
(In reply to Matthias Clasen from comment #7) > We won't add this to gtk2, which is in deep maintenance mode now. gtk3 is > the place where this kind of feature addition can happen, but the bug can > easily stay open another 4 years, if nobody volunteers to work on this > feature. This, but with GTK+ 4 now being the only place where it can be added. encouragement: GtkComboBox is not a baffling dual-mode monstrosity in GTK+ 4 (you're welcome!), so the implementation should be approximately 50% as difficult, and that's scientific fact. Anyway, let's try to keep this all in one bug: it seems to be the same as: *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 567141 ***