Visual Studio Extension: Home and End keys should move the text cursor to the beginning and end of the input text box

[mack-at-pieces]

Discussed in #476

^{Originally posted by icnocop November 25, 2024}
Hi.

Thank you for "Pieces for Developers".

When using the Visual Studio extension, the input text box in the Pieces Copilot tab does not respond to the Home and End keys as expected.

I expected the Home and End keys to move the text cursor to the beginning and end of the input text box, respectively.

Instead, the Home and End keys switch to first and last tabs, respectively.
For example, pressing the Home key switches to the Solution Explorer tab, which is also docked on the right side of the IDE.
Pressing the End key switches to the Notifications tab, which is also docked on the right side of the IDE.

If I had typed some text in the input text box, I expected to be able to jump to the beginning and end of the input text box, using the Home and End keys respectfully.

Thank you.

Pieces for Visual Studio 3.0.1.0
Visual Studio 2022 17.12.0

[pieces-support-bot]

Hi @mack-at-pieces - Thank you so much for creating this issue. Your issue has been automatically triaged and routed to the proper Pieces team member. Look for a follow-up within the next 24 hours.

In the meantime, please check out these helpful resources:

• Existing Issues: https://github.com/pieces-app/support/issues
• Documentation: https://docs.pieces.app
• YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@getpieces

We appreciate your patience and contribution to making Pieces better!

[robert-at-pieces]

Will be gathering notes here as I look into this.

Possibly related:
https://weblog.west-wind.com/posts/2021/May/25/WebView2-Home-and-End-Key-Problems-inside-of-WPF-TabControl-Containers

^This seems to be right on the money. Using the Copilot as a floating window instead of docked/tabbed saw the hotkeys behaving in an expected manner.

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Relevant: MicrosoftEdge/WebView2Feedback#4147 (comment)

[robert-at-pieces]

@icnocop - So this seems to be a little trickier than expected. I don't believe I have access to change Visual Studio's TabControl behavior and the tabs are intercepting the Home/End keys.

If I mark the key press event as handled, it no longer is intercepted, but it also no longer gets to the webview.

I've tried marking the keypress event as handled and forwarding it to the webview with a javascript document dispatchEvent, but it seems to drop some keypresses and feels quite poor to use.

Will update when there is a proper solution.