Formatting bar included in tab sequence/index

Olav Luijten April 19, 2021

Since the latest upgrade of Jira I'm having issues with the tab ordering. Tabbing in forms is a perfect way tot quickly fill out a form, html is even giving possibilities (tab index) to assign the ordering of fields in a form (or exclude fields). Also, it prevents to use the mouse.

However, since the latest upgrade, the options in the formatting toolbar, when assigning, creating a new issue, adding a comment, etc, is counted in as Tab-key fields, example (style is now highlighted from tabbing from Assignee to Comment and will tab through the other options before entering the Comment-field):

Tab Index.png

I can hide the formatting toolbar, but also a hidden toolbar counts as 1 tab. And I frequently do use the formatting options and a hidden toolbar isn't useful then.

I was wondering if you also experience this annoying 'new feature' and if it can be solved?

It's not browser dependent, I tested in Firefox as well as Edge.

We are using Jira Server 8.14.1.

3 answers

0 votes
Sw3nna April 4, 2022

It would be nice for the hide / show toolbar option to be first in the list or toolbar tab order so you can tab once, active the hide / show tool bar as required, and easily tab to the comments section.

Failing that, a keyboard shortcut to hide / show the toolbar.

0 votes
Craig Castle-Mead
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January 13, 2022

Hi all,

We've seen the same change happen when moving from the 8.13.x to 8.20.x

The 8.14 changelog ( https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirasoftware/jira-software-8-14-x-release-notes-1027133861.html#JiraSoftware8.14.xreleasenotes-a11y ) mentions that the toolbar is now included in the tab ordering

CCM

Olav Luijten January 14, 2022

Hi Craig, thanks for posting this.

So Atlassian had a clear reason to do this, because of accessibility. Unfortunately it lacks usability. I think most users will first type, or using default shortcuts like ctrl+b/i/u for bold/italic/underline text, and then applying format. Not first choose a format and then type, at least, I can't imagine that this is accepted through user acceptance tests, or the acceptance tests where wrongfully written. 

Creating shortcuts for other format-bars options would be more logic then putting this in the tab-sequence. 

0 votes
Leah Hassin June 16, 2021

We updated to Jira 8.15.1 over the weekend and I am now experiencing this issue as well when tabbing through screens any time there's a rich text field (comment, description, etc). Like you, I would prefer to not have the toolbar hidden as I use it regularly. It would be wonderful to have this work as it used to so we can quickly tab through a screen. It's been quite annoying over the last few days. 

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