WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

jQuery: link focus lost in FF 3.5.5 when following link and hitting backspace key

for

From: Loremy
Date: Nov 11, 2009 3:00PM

Hello, I'm a web designer and web user interested in accessibility
matters and I hope I can learn and contribute here in some way or other.

Here's my first question:

I'm using Firefox 3.5.5 on Vista 32 Home Premium SP2 and only recently
noticed that -- with javascript/jQuery enabled -- link focus is lost
when you tab through a page, follow the link to another page and then
hit the backspace key to come back. Tab navigation continues at top of
page, not with the next link after the one in focus before.
No problems in this respect with IE8 and Opera.

Try it for yourself, e.g. with the "Plugins" link in the menu on
http://jquery.com/ -- once with js enabled (link focus is lost when you
come back after having followed the link to "Plugins", and once
with js disabled (link focus is still there after hitting the backspace
key.)

I can't believe it's just me...
Can anybody with Firefox (please mention version number and platform)
confirm or deny, please?

It's even more irksome in my particular case, since I have just
implemented a stylesheet switcher in order to enhance certain
accessibility aspects, but ironically this particular bug leads to a
loss of accessibility...

Does anybody know what might be the reason (version 1.3.2.min related?,
cookies related?, etc.) for this and how to solve it?

Loremy