

So I hit "TAB" and Google mail sends the partially composed message? - ColinWright

So I'm using Google's compose window, I'm in the middle of composing the message, press "TAB" to, you know, like, insert a TAB character, and it sends the message.<p>So what's that about?<p>People, when you design an interface, don't put invisible, undiscoverable, irrecoverable actions in it.
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ghgr
It happened to me several times. To avoid that I always write the destination
email address after having finished my message.

Also, the combination <TAB> \+ Space also sends messages here in Hacker Ne

~~~
makethetick
When buttons are focused, enter and space both submit the button.

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j0hnsn0w
I enable "Undo Send" to recover from accidental sends. I just hit tab here and
it shifted me to "add comment" :D

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protothomas
Pressing tab will move the focus to the send button, hitting return will then
send the message. Presumably this is what you did. Possibly not ideal, but I'd
disagree it is an invisible, undiscoverable (tab to move focus is standard),
and irrecoverable (you must also hit return).

~~~
lignuist
For programmers it might feel odd, if pressing tab makes the textarea loosing
the focus, instead of putting a tab character in the text.

~~~
mattstreet
More counter-productive than odd. Since most of us are already used to using
tab in browsers and forms.

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/>

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dwild
I can't reproduce your situation on Google Chrome.

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?

~~~
ColinWright
After re-reading, I freely admit that parts of this make me sound really
angry, and to some extent I am. I'm finding the Google Mail interface, and
Google products in general, just get in the way, and stop me from working. I
have to change to work the way they want, and many times that removes from me
facilities that I depend on. So just to let you know that I'm having a bad
day, and I apologise in advance for some ranting.

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.

~~~
bradleyland
> 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.

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capo
It does not do that, I just double checked, even when the focus is on the
"Send" button a dialog box pops with "Send (Ctrl-Enter)" and no sending
happens. Maybe what you encountered was the work of a browser extension or a
labs feature left enabled, or most likely you just tapped return at the wrong
moment.

~~~
ColinWright
It may not have done it for you, but it did it for me, and others in this
thread have confirmed that it did it for them.

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.

~~~
bradleyland
I think maybe you should take a step back and realize that the way you
communicated your message initially isn't consistent with the defense you're
making here. You didn't state your original issue as a bug, you called Google
out as if this were some kind of feature:

"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.

~~~
ColinWright
I acknowledge that I was curt. I do, however, believe that I'm being
consistent. It's news to me that it's perceived as not, so I'll take another
look at it. Thank you.

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._

~~~
bradleyland
All understandable points. I'll put out a couple of suggestions. Keep in mind
that when troubleshooting, these are all guesses. They're not intended to
imply that you don't have a problem. Also try to keep in mind that there may
be some small detail you've overlooked that is causing the behavior you're
observing. If you're dead set on insisting that the behavior happens the way
you've described and there are no other possibilities, then you should stop
reading here.

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.

