Refine tab to move focus even when the last item is a button #13938

tejjgv · 2025-09-19T16:51:59Z

Closes #11937

Description

Improve tab behavior to move focus even when the last item is a button

Limit focus changes to fields within the EntryEditor, preventing jumps to unrelated UI components.
Introduce static helper methods in EditorTextField to handle TAB key behavior.
Ensure all TextField instances in SimpleEditor, CitationKeyEditor, PersonsEditor, and MarkdownEditor have proper IDs, enabling correct detection of the last field.

Steps to test

Open JabRef and load any entry in the Entry Editor.
Navigate through the fields in a tab using the TAB key.
When the focus reaches the last field of the current tab, press TAB again.
Verify that the focus moves directly to the first field of the next tab in the Entry Editor.
Repeat the process for multiple tabs to ensure that the focus does not jump to any fields outside the Entry Editor.
Test both single-line and multi-line fields (e.g., SimpleEditor, PersonsEditor, MarkdownEditor) to ensure TAB navigation works consistently.

Mandatory checks

I own the copyright of the code submitted and I license it under the MIT license
I manually tested my changes in running JabRef (always required)
I described the change in CHANGELOG.md in a way that is understandable for the average user (if change is visible to the user)
I checked the user documentation: Is the information available and up to date? If not, I created an issue at https://github.com/JabRef/user-documentation/issues or, even better, I submitted a pull request updating file(s) in https://github.com/JabRef/user-documentation/tree/main/en.

Screen.Recording.2025-09-13.155910.mp4

…ves focus to the next tab's field

# Conflicts: # jabgui/src/main/java/org/jabref/gui/entryeditor/EntryEditor.java # jabgui/src/main/java/org/jabref/gui/fieldeditors/EditorTextField.java

…ves focus to the next tab's field

…es focus to the next tab's field

Co-authored-by: Carl Christian Snethlage <50491877+calixtus@users.noreply.github.com>

…to fix-issue-11937 # Conflicts: # jabgui/src/main/java/org/jabref/gui/entryeditor/EntryEditor.java

subhramit · 2025-09-19T20:44:49Z

jabgui/src/main/java/org/jabref/gui/fieldeditors/MarkdownEditor.java


    @Override
-    protected TextInputControl createTextInputControl() {
+    protected TextInputControl createTextInputControl(Field field) {


Would like if you could clarify, how is this change helping?
I don't see the field parameter being used anywhere here

The parameter isn’t used in this override, but it’s required to match the parent method’s signature. I could add a suppress annotation here

If one is having to do that, it's probably a bad use case for overriding
Will think over this

jabgui/src/main/java/org/jabref/gui/fieldeditors/MarkdownEditor.java

Siedlerchr · 2025-12-02T20:52:01Z

Tab nav works also now when with the ctie key button

koppor · 2025-12-03T07:01:02Z

I am on the generate button. I pressing Tab, the tab "Optional fields" should be focussed

Nothing visible is selected however. When pressing Tab again, the search bar is selected.

koppor

Small comments

Did not work for me on Windows 11

Maybe, we need LOGGER.trace statements and add enable trace for EntryEditor.java in tinylog.properties?

jabgui/src/main/java/org/jabref/gui/entryeditor/EntryEditor.java

koppor · 2025-12-03T07:46:09Z

jabgui/src/main/java/org/jabref/gui/fieldeditors/EditorTextField.java

        ClipBoardManager.addX11Support(this);
    }

+    public void setupTabNavigation(Predicate<TextField> isLastFieldChecker, Runnable nextTabSelector) {


Still a TODO

Co-authored-by: Oliver Kopp <kopp.dev@gmail.com>

Siedlerchr · 2025-12-03T18:57:18Z

@koppor Select the first field in required fields and then just hit tab

jabrefjkeyboard.mov

koppor · 2025-12-04T10:57:14Z

Do we need a second issue for Shift+Tab or could this be done in this PR? 😅

koppor · 2025-12-04T11:05:55Z

Does not work on Windows 10:

https://www.loom.com/share/7c0d4090a9d24952a8e96bd937e299f7

I tried commit e32c12d

koppor · 2025-12-04T12:14:20Z

I tried again with

gg.cmd just run-pr 13938

and it worked fine. 😅

Everything addressed

tejjgv and others added 23 commits September 13, 2025 01:11

Fix TAB navigation in EntryEditor to move focus to next tab's field

79b5fc5

Merge branch 'JabRef:main' into tab-navigation-test

77cf911

- Fixed TAB navigation in the EntryEditor so that pressing TAB now mo…

e0ddc5b

…ves focus to the next tab's field

Merge branch 'main' of https://github.com/tejjgv/jabref

4ac7bb9

# Conflicts: # jabgui/src/main/java/org/jabref/gui/entryeditor/EntryEditor.java # jabgui/src/main/java/org/jabref/gui/fieldeditors/EditorTextField.java

- Fixed TAB navigation in the EntryEditor so that pressing TAB now mo…

ee1f72d

…ves focus to the next tab's field

-Fixed TAB navigation in the EntryEditor so that pressing TAB now mov…

13425c9

…es focus to the next tab's field

Replace null returns with Optional

af87b0f

Update jabgui/src/main/java/org/jabref/gui/entryeditor/EntryEditor.java

dce3209

Co-authored-by: Carl Christian Snethlage <50491877+calixtus@users.noreply.github.com>

Replace null returns with Optional

c22c466

Merge remote-tracking branch 'upstream/main' into fix-issue-11937

236277c

chore: trigger CI rerun

c40c287

chore: remove dummy.txt

70c99ea

Use KeyCode.TAB instead of text comparison for tab key detection

90b9bbe

Merge branch 'main' into fix-issue-11937

3a48756

Merge branch 'main' into fix-issue-11937

e9774b4

Update CHANGELOG.md

54d51e2

Update jabgui/src/main/java/org/jabref/gui/entryeditor/EntryEditor.java

e75bbea

Reformat

7a16a93

Refine tab to move focus even when the last item is a button

c777854

Merge branch 'fix-issue-11937' of https://github.com/tejjgv/jabref in…

e705c3f

…to fix-issue-11937 # Conflicts: # jabgui/src/main/java/org/jabref/gui/entryeditor/EntryEditor.java

Merge branch 'JabRef:main' into fix-issue-11937

60a53aa

Refine tab to move focus even when the last item is a button

ab99d8e

Refine tab to move focus even when the last item is a button

beae442

tejjgv mentioned this pull request Sep 19, 2025

Tab in the last text field in a tab should focus the next tab in the tabs of the entry editor. #11937

Closed

subhramit reviewed Sep 19, 2025

View reviewed changes

added supress warning

5074fb7

koppor reviewed Sep 20, 2025

View reviewed changes

jabgui/src/main/java/org/jabref/gui/fieldeditors/MarkdownEditor.java Show resolved Hide resolved

tejjgv requested review from koppor and subhramit September 21, 2025 11:56

subhramit requested a review from Siedlerchr September 21, 2025 15:36

Siedlerchr removed the status: changes-required Pull requests that are not yet complete label Dec 2, 2025

fix import order

e4e6c7e

Siedlerchr requested a review from koppor December 2, 2025 20:52

github-actions bot added status: changes-required Pull requests that are not yet complete and removed status: ready-for-review Pull Requests that are ready to be reviewed by the maintainers status: changes-required Pull requests that are not yet complete labels Dec 2, 2025

koppor requested changes Dec 3, 2025

View reviewed changes

github-actions bot added the status: changes-required Pull requests that are not yet complete label Dec 3, 2025

Siedlerchr and others added 3 commits December 3, 2025 19:45

Update jabgui/src/main/java/org/jabref/gui/entryeditor/EntryEditor.java

3592e4f

Co-authored-by: Oliver Kopp <kopp.dev@gmail.com>

Update jabgui/src/main/java/org/jabref/gui/entryeditor/EntryEditor.java

b36fe68

Co-authored-by: Oliver Kopp <kopp.dev@gmail.com>

Update jabgui/src/main/java/org/jabref/gui/entryeditor/EntryEditor.java

3fa4ef7

Co-authored-by: Oliver Kopp <kopp.dev@gmail.com>

github-actions bot removed the status: changes-required Pull requests that are not yet complete label Dec 3, 2025

remove duplicated code

cfa0138

Merge branch 'main' into fix-issue-11937

e32c12d

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/main' into fix-issue-11937

cd63c08

Fix CHANGELOG.md

b7533a4

koppor approved these changes Dec 4, 2025

View reviewed changes

koppor enabled auto-merge December 4, 2025 12:21

koppor mentioned this pull request Dec 4, 2025

Shift+Tab on first field of entry editor should focus last field of previous tab #14513

Open

Siedlerchr approved these changes Dec 4, 2025

View reviewed changes

koppor added this pull request to the merge queue Dec 4, 2025

Merged via the queue into JabRef:main with commit 10762da Dec 4, 2025
52 checks passed

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Refine tab to move focus even when the last item is a button #13938

Refine tab to move focus even when the last item is a button #13938

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tejjgv commented Sep 19, 2025

Description

Steps to test

Mandatory checks

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subhramit Sep 19, 2025

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Siedlerchr commented Dec 2, 2025

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Siedlerchr commented Dec 3, 2025

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koppor commented Dec 4, 2025

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koppor commented Dec 4, 2025

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