Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 50659
Default focus on dialogs does not preselect texts
Last modified: 2013-02-07 22:36:41 UTC
Issue applies to all known OO product versions, even StarOffice Build 106. When working inside OO (no matter if Writer, Calc or Impress) you sometimes need to call a dialog, e.g. for changing the style or object properties. After the dialog opens it will display several tabstrips with an active tabstrip in the front. Inside this tabstrip many other user interface elements will be available. (e.g. the Organizer tabstrip) If a input field is the first field to be focused after the dialog is being presented to the user (the dialog's default focus user interface element) the textual content (the characters) of that field will not automatically be preselected. When navigating the focus forward [Tab] and back again [Shift]+[Tab] the textual content will be preselected. Preselected text has the opportunity to easily overtype the preselected text without the need to do a selection before. Especially in dialogs where the text field will be deleted with a likelihood of more than 80% the text should be automatically preselected. (Style dialogs, page 1: Organizer, field "Name" for example) The unavailability of the preselection in the default focus field is inconsistent to focus management on fields in general. While navigating with [Tab] to other fields those field's content always gets preselected while the default focus field does not on it's initial focus. Please preselect default focus field's textual content as well.
Additional information: If you switch through the tab pages by using [Ctrl]+[PageUp] or [Ctrl]+[PageDown] the default focus field will automatically preselect text content. (That's exactly the way it should be on the first tabstrip page on initial display!)
As this is an enhancement, the owner gets changed to the owner for enhancements and features.
Added further cc.
I still believe this is a BUG. Whenever an input field gets a focus, the content gets automatically preselected. When displaying a field the default field also gets focus. Thus is also preselects the content. The users are used to this behaviour since the operating systems all support this kind of preselection, in almost any application or system component.