When in the inbox, I'll often use the "Root of Thread" hotkey to
view the entire thread of a message. However, this has the very
annoying feature of moving the focus to the mailbox list instead of
keeping focus in the message list - meaning a bunch of extra key
presses are required to jump through the thread messages.
In addition, once done with the thread view, I'll hit escape to
return back to the original mailbox view, which again puts focus on
the mailbox list instead of the message list, requiring that I tab
focus back into the message list.
In both cases, I would prefer (I would argue that it is optimal)
for the focus to remain on the message list.
Note that Option+Clicking the "Thread" button keeps the focus on
the message list. However, this is not optimal because it requires
a click. Also, strangely, when using Esc to exit from the thread
view the active focus goes to the Headers view toggle of the
individual message.