[Webkit-unassigned] [Bug 22261] Clicking on a non-text input element does not give it focus

[bugzilla-daemon at webkit.org]

https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22261

--- Comment #71 from Dave <dave.batiste at d2l.com> ---
(In reply to Darin Adler from comment #68)
> (In reply to John A. Bilicki III from comment #67)
> > what is the benefit of not focusing a button?
> 
> This is the benefit:
> 
> Mac users expect the focus to remain in the text field if you click on a
> button. That’s what happens everywhere else on their computer in all the Mac
> applications. It’s a benefit that buttons work as expected, consistent with
> other buttons on the Mac, and don't pull the focus away from the text field
> you are already typing in.
> 
> I understand that if you’ve never used a Mac you might not be aware that
> this is a benefit, but I assure you that it is.
> 
> If I understand your argument correctly, reading through and trying not to
> be offended by the repeated accusations of bad faith, bad intentions, and
> insufficient empathy for our fellow human beings, you are saying that this
> choice makes it impossible to make websites work accessibly, and is simply
> an expression of arrogance and bad decision making and a lack of care for
> other people.
> 
> That’s not our intent. We’d like this to fit in well with other Mac software.

I fully appreciate that Apple has the best intentions in making buttons in Safari behave the same as buttons in MacOS apps, but web developers require browser consistency in order to deliver applications and features to those users. Without that consistency, developers are relegated to conditional code and terrible work-arounds to accommodate those differences in behavior, or worse, those features don't work properly in Safari (which is the case that prompted my previous reply).  If web apps break because of browser inconsistencies, users are certainly worse off. While I am sure Apple has (or at had) some use cases to justify this behavior, as a long-time Mac users I'm not sure what the benefits are, and that ought to make designers think twice.

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