[MU4 Issue] Palette type-ahead navigation no longer possible

[Phil-TA]

Describe the bug MuseScore 3 provides a way of quickly navigating through palettes using the keyboard. This is no longer possible with MuseScore 4.

To Reproduce Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Select a palette (for example "Clefs") with a left mouse click
2. Hit key "D"

Expected behavior The Palettes panel scrolls (jumps) to the "Dynamics" palette

Actual behavior A D note is entered into the score! (or if a key other than A, B, C, D, E, F, or G was pressed then nothing happens at all).

Screenshots N/A

Platform information OS: Windows 10 Version 2009, Arch.: x86_64, MuseScore version (64-bit): 4.0.0-223330401, revision: github-musescore-musescore-3277328

Additional context N/A

[MarcSabatella]

Keyboard navigation in palettes definitely works, using the cursor keys. But you need to first put your keyboard focus in the palette - clicking does not do that. Instead, use standard accessibility shortcuts like Tab and F6 (with or without Shift) to move keyboard focus. Or use the palette search shortcut Ctrl+F9. Then you can type the first couple of characters of "Dynamics" and you will see all dynamics displayed.

[Phil-TA]

Thanks Mark. In v3.6, clicking a palette name gave it both mouse and keyboard focus - from there, hitting a key would then "cycle" through the open palettes beginning with that letter. This was very handy for swift navigation to less commonly used elements (I have a custom palette set up for the more common elements). I appreciate using palettes' initial letters is a non-standard accessibility shortcut, but it was very handy for speedier workflow. However, I'm sure the Palette search feature will speed things up for me - I've not used that before and it works well.

[MarcSabatella]

Indeed, I didn't know that was even possible; I don't think it's documented, and might just be kind of an accident that it works (like if the palettes are implemented using list widgets). I am not sure if reimplementing that behavior would break any of the new MU4 accessibility workflows, but if it doesn't, certainly that behavior could potentially be reinstated. I just wanted to clarify, the palettes are keyboard-accessible in the ways that were actually intended to work.

[shoogle]

Yes, this was a nice time-saving feature in MuseScore 3 that it would be nice to get back in MuseScore 4. It won't be in the initial 4.0 release though.