I'm working on this UI where I present a popover and user fills in some brief information. There are various buttons and a single editable text field in the UI.
When 'Full Keyboard access' is disabled in System Settings and the popover is presented the editable NSTextField is the initial first responder and the user can begin typing immediately. This is the behavior that I expect and want.
Now when full keyboard access is enabled the text field does not become the immediate first responder (and none of the buttons in the popover have 'focus' state either) so initially hitting a key does nothing. To me this feels unnatural and is not the expected behavior. To interact with the text field with full keyboard access I have to do one of the following:
- Use the mouse to click the text field (which is an extra step).
Or
- Press tab several times to move 'Focus' (initially no button has it) all the way down to the textfield.
Both requirements slow down the user. Is this expected behavior? Shouldn't the initial key view follow the natural first responder (in this case an editable text field) and the user can tab away from that starting location? instead nobody has key focus when the popover is first presented until tabbing is initiated.
I can currently 'workaround' this it seems by manually setting the text field as first responder in viewDidAppear
[self.view.window makeFirstResponder:self.theTextField];
Then the text field accepts keyboard input immediately. But when 'Full keyboard access' is disabled (which I assume is the more typical configuration) this is not required, the text field just gets first responder by default.
If this is not the expected behavior let me know and I may file a feedback.