[Bob Williams]

While reading certain sites, especially news sites, I will frequently just click links with the middle button (the scroll wheel in my case) on my mouse to open them in background tabs. With the SP releases, however, I periodically get a strange behavior where everything goes as planned until the background tab finishes loading, at which point its content is shown in the window. When this happens, both the original tab and the new tab are shown highlighted in the tab drawer, and OW acts confused - it's as though it doesn't know what tab has focus. Clicking the original tab again selects it fully and unselects the new tab.

I've run into this on both my desktop and my laptop. Has anyone else seen this?

[Forrest]

I typically command+click links to do this, and haven't had any issues like that.

[David Shepherdson]

I have seen exactly the same behaviour with the last couple of Sneaky Peeks, and I think it has to do with sites using JavaScript to set the keyboard focus for form fields after they've loaded (though I must say I haven't looked into it so I have no evidence for that claim :)).

I particularly notice this with the UK National Rail site at http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/. If I do a timetable search, then command-click one of the result links so it opens in a background tab, that tab grabs the focus when it finishes loading.

As the original poster described, the tab drawer exhibits some unusual behaviour in this situation, with the originally-selected tab retaining the outline of its 'highlight colour' around the tab thumbnail, while the newly-opened tab has its thumbnail indicated with the highlight colour as though it has been clicked. (Er, that description sounds a bit confusing, but short of a screenshot it's a bit tricky to describe...)

[David Shepherdson]

All right, so after posting that I had to investigate further. :)

It seems my theory about JavaScript and focus was almost correct. The National Rail pages have code like this in them:

<script type="text/javascript">
window.onload=function(){this.focus(); } 
</script>

...which I think is the trigger for this unusual behaviour.

Here also is a screenshot showing the tab highlighting when this occurs:



David

[Bob Williams]

Originally Posted by David Shepherdson

<script type="text/javascript">
window.onload=function(){this.focus(); } 
</script>

"Our site is so great that we know you absolutely want to give it your full, undivided attention when it finishes loading, even if you opted to load it in the background while working on other things!"

Stupid web developers. (As a web developer myself, I can rightly call certain of us stupid if I want.)

What I'd do to these folks if I got my hands on them.... USABILITY, people, USABILITY!

[Forrest]

Originally Posted by Bob Williams

"Our site is so great that we know you absolutely want to give it your full, undivided attention when it finishes loading, even if you opted to load it in the background while working on other things!"

Stupid web developers. (As a web developer myself, I can rightly call certain of us stupid if I want.)

What I'd do to these folks if I got my hands on them.... USABILITY, people, USABILITY!

I concur .