[orca-list] Addressing the changes made in Firefox 3.6

[Joanmarie Diggs <joanmarie diggs gmail com>]

Hey all.

I've just committed a change within Orca to address one of the issues
which has come up as a result of changes made within Firefox/Gecko 3.6.
The change I've made is simple, but it requires some explanation I
think.

As most of you know, due to various and sundry issues within Firefox's
native caret navigation model, we've had to implement our own. In order
for Orca's caret navigation model to work as expected, it was necessary
to grab focus on the object you were navigating in. Failure to do that,
meant things broke. Due to a change in Firefox 3.6 (but only builds
coming after 30th September), not only is it apparently unnecessary to
grab focus on the object you are navigating in, the act of doing so has
unintended side effects which cause the "jumping around" and "looping"
behavior some of you have reported recently. We cannot detect with
certainty which condition you are in. So....

There is a new setting which you will find on the Firefox page of the
Orca Preferences dialog for Firefox: "Grab focus on objects when
navigating". This setting is enabled/checked by default at the moment.
This means:

* If you are using Firefox 3.5 or Firefox 3.6 prior to 30th September, 
  you should do nothing and things should continue to work.

* If you are using Firefox 3.6 from 30th September or later, you should
  uncheck this checkbox.

Note that in the process of getting to this bottom of this bug, I came
across other changes (and I suspect regressions/bugs) in Firefox 3.6. So
the above is not a cure-all; it is a make-it-somewhat-better-all. I'm
still working on all of this and will keep you posted.

Thanks! Take care.
--joanie