So what's that about?
People, when you design an interface, don't put invisible, undiscoverable, irrecoverable actions in it.
Also, the combination <TAB> + Space also sends messages here in Hacker Ne
A holdover from the old snail mail days?
But yeah, it sucks to write a real amount of text in a texbox that doesn't let you use tab. Of course you can always write in another editor and then put it in the textbox.
Even easier if you use something like this:https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/its-all-text/
I do these exact steps: 1. Press Compose 2. Enter recipient 3. Press TAB 4. Enter subject 5. Press TAB 6. Enter message 7. Press TAB
At the end the focus is on Send, which is an expected behavior and it displays a tooltip that says "Send (Ctrl-Enter)". I'm able to send the message if I press SPACE or ENTER, but again, it's an expected behavior when you get the focus on a button (the tooltip can be misleading).
Do you have more information that could help finding the cause?
And so, to reply to your point.
I'm no longer on the machine I was using, and I was using Firefox on Ubuntu, not Chrome. I won't be able to test your sequence on the original configuration until Friday at the earliest.
Plus, in trying to log in on the appropriate account, I'm told I'm already logged in with a different one, and do I want to link the accounts?
No.
How can I proceed? It appears I can't. I either have to log out the other account, which would be a pain, or link the accounts, which I can't do because of separation of concerns.
There are times I really, really hate Google. There's no link that says - no, just log me in, dammit.
So I reload the page and oh look! I'm logged in! That's obvious ...
So, now to proceed with what you say ... and yes, what you say has exactly the effect you describe, which is exactly the effect I expected.
Earlier today, however, on a different machine, with Firefox, I clicked Compose, clicked in the recipient box and type the address, clicked in the subject box and completed the subject, clicked in the text box and started composing. Part way through I was generating a plain-text style bullet list and hit return, then TAB.
The message was then sent, despite my expectation. That's as far as I can recall, but I did it a second time and it did the same thing. I'm pretty sure I didn't hit space or enter after hitting TAB, although I can't guarantee that now, several hours, much typing, and several tasks later.
So here's the point for other designers of user interfaces. When your use is in a text box, TAB might take them out without them realizing, and then hitting ENTER or SPACE might perform an action they really aren't expecting, and didn't want. perhaps you should design the interface so that the button they get to after the text box does not perform an irreversible action.
After typing my reply in the other thread, I read far enough down the page to get to this entry, and I have to say I agree 100% with what you've said here. The fact that pressing [TAB, space] sends the email irreversibly is dangerous, and can pretty easily happen by accident when typing quickly.
Having said that, the behavior of TAB moving between form elements is a long standing behavior. Many "power users" use it to great effect, but it's discoverability is very poor. The solution is a tough compromise though. In Gmail, many users rely on the [TAB, space] sequence to send email. I do the same thing on Hacker News. When I finish my comment, I use [TAB, space] to submit my comment. The people who write the software are loath to give that up.
My feeling is that within the rich text editing area of an email message, TAB ought to insert a tab character, but I'm not sure how difficult that is. The TAB keypress is handled by the browser, so if the Gmail devs were to go through the trouble of trapping TAB and inserting the tab character in to the text area, they'd be breaking the expected behavior of the web browser. In that way, this solution creates another problem. Which one is "right"?
It's a bit of a paradox. If nothing else, I hope this helps shed some light on why these design decisions aren't always as straight forward as they seem.
For reference, I don't have any browser extensions installed, and I haven't used any labs features, so neither of those suggestions is correct either.
And forgive me for being blunt, but your reply seems to be similar to what happens when a problem is reported to some "support" services where they say "Works for me!" The clear underlying text is "So you're an idiot, and don't matter."
So thank you for your suggestions, but they're wrong. And it did do it for me, and I double-checked.
"People, when you design an interface, don't put invisible, undiscoverable, irrecoverable actions in it."
This would only be a feature if it happened for everyone, and now you're using curt language with someone who is trying to help.
Troubleshooting is hard, and the communications involved are often polarizing. End users commonly feel defensive, and troubleshooters often fail to couch their language diplomatically.
The matter of reproducibility is the basic litmus test by which programmers classify issues as bugs versus environment issues. Bugs are problems in the software, and environment issues are problems in the user's specific configuration. Often times an issue is a combination of both. The willingness to engage in troubleshooting environment issues varies by developer, but if you're interested in receiving help, it's worth acknowledging that your problem falls somewhere on this continuum, which means you always bear some responsibility in remaining objective during the troubleshooting process. You seem convinced that this is some type of feature issue, rather than remaining open to other possibilities.
I think I might have an idea about what's happening in your case, but I'm reluctant to even posit the idea, because I fear you'll lash out as me as well.
And I didn't call it as a bug because it happened to me twice, it has happened to me on other platforms, and I assumed that a Google Mail interface would behave the way Google intended. I acknowledge that testing and debugging is hard, but I guess by default I had assumed Google would get it right. Your assertion is that they haven't got it right, and that this is a bug. Noted.
For reference, I work on software used in safety-critical situations, and so I know a little about getting user interfaces consistent, repeatable, and tested. I have the advantage that our system can control the hardware and environment, but I am aware of many of the issues. I'm just annoyed that hitting "TAB" caused me to send an incomplete message to an important customer, making me look stupid. I guess I'll have to treat Google's interfaces with the same paranoia as I use professionally when I write software. That's disappointing, but I guess unavoidable given their constraints.
And I'm sorry I've made you feel that you can't propose a suggestion as to what might have happened. That's really, really not intentional. But when I'm already having a bad morning, having someone say "No, that doesn't happen" when it clearly did is not a sure fire way of improving it.
So put it all down to the problems of writing software for uncontrollable environments causing different and sometimes undesirable behavior, coupled with the inability to read people accurately in a forum type of context, coupled in turn with a certain amount of stress over the whole thing.
And I apologize unreservedly for offence caused, and thank you for your comment.
Added in edit: I've upvoted you - I genuinely appreciate your comment.
As troubleshooters, we often try to fill in the blanks with what we perceive as small pieces of missing information. This isn't an individual assault, but rather learned behavior. I'm damn good with a computer, but my #1 rule of troubleshooting is to assume that any "truth" about what I've observed can be invalidated through empiricism.
Enough hedging, let's see if we make any progress in troubleshooting the problem you experienced :) What we know so far:
* Pressing the TAB key results in an email being sent
* Other users report that pressing TAB doesn't send the email
We accept these as truths, but with two caveats: 1) they may be disproved or refined at any time (we aren't sentimentally attached to them, ego be damned), 2) there may be some additional information that is not yet obvious, so the list shouldn't be considered complete
What can we tease from this information?
1) Can you get the behavior to occur predictably? If you open a new compose window and press TAB, does the email send every time?
2) What is the normally expected behavior of TAB? In most web browsers, the TAB key is used to move focus from one form element to another. In Windows, the "focus" can move to buttons as well. In OS X, the focus navigation using TAB is constrained to text fields and lists by default, but can be configured to "All Controls" through the Keyboard preference pane.
3) What processes are available to intentionally send an email? That I am aware of, you can: click the send key, use the keyboard shortcut ctrl+return or cmd+enter (Windows/OS X). Use TAB to move focus to the "Send" button and press the spacebar/return/enter.
4) What small pieces of information might be missing? We've already ruled out browser extensions, so that's a good start. Try to think of any other software that uses global keyboard shortcuts or performs automation.
My pet theory (guess) would be that you're pressing TAB expecting that the TAB character is inserted in to the text field, but this is actually causing focus to move to the "Send" button. From there, a press of the spacebar, return, or enter key is sending the email. This is very easy to do when typing. If you can't regularly reproduce the behavior by a simple press of the TAB key, I'd say this gives this theory a higher probability of correctness. If you can reproduce the behavior by simply pressing TAB, then you can discard this theory.
Let me know if you have any thoughts on these items.
Fact is, most reported problems, in the end, are caused by the user him/herself, so his response is not that bad.
My response could be thought of as a data point, that what you intended to say is not how the message was received. You may have intended to say: "Hmm, it worked for me, I wonder what's different about your setup." What I heard was: "You're wrong, it doesn't do that, I've tested it, so you're obviously doing something stupid."