Tab into SELECT list Problem with Safari on Apple Powerbook

11:53.25 - Thursday 3rd November 2005   (Link to This Entry)

For some time now I've been developing on a 15in Apple G4 Powerbook using Safari as the browser of choice (since IE on the Mac is an ugly piece of shite), and for the majority of that time I've had one gripe above all others - the fact that you cannot use the Tab key to move into a SELECT list opn a web form.

This most frequently crops up while I'm creating a new database table in phpMyAdmin - I enter the field name in the first column and hit Tab to move to the Field Type column and... the focus ignores it altogether, placing my cursor in the Length/Values column instead.

I mentioned this to our print designer today and he claimed that it never happened to him on his G5. Naturally I called bullshit, since we use the exact same browser version with default settings, but a quick test determined that - yes indeed - the cursor stops where expected on the G5. As a further test we tried the same form on another Powerbook, and once again the column was skipped.

We can't even blame the browser version, since the G5 and my Powerbook both use 2.0, and the other Powerbook uses 2.0.1. There seems to be some bizarre hidden 'feature' in Safari that prevents Powerbook users tabbing onto these elements, and for the life of us we can't figure out why.

At least I know I'm not going mad now.. XD