[whatwg] Accesskey in Web Forms 2

[Ian Hickson]

On Wed, 10 Nov 2004, Matthew Raymond wrote:
>
> Also, I'd like to point out that there's virtually no reason to add 
> markup to enable custom access key functionality to browsers. There's 
> very little information a browser could get about a control that isn't 
> already in a control element's semantics and its <label> and |id|, 
> |name| and |title| attributes. If a UA can't create a list of controls 
> to bind to from all of these sources of information, I doubt more markup 
> would help. I like James Graham's idea of simply saying that UAs 
> "should" provide such functionality and leaving it up to the UA to 
> decide how.

I added the following to Web Apps:

  <p>Interactive user agents that support keyboard input devices
  should allow users to conveniently access or activate hyperlinks,
  form controls, and other interactive parts of Web content using the
  keyboard, without having to cycle through all such content.</p>


> I agree. Many of the problems with |accesskey| could be fixed with some 
> creative thinking on the part of UA vendors. Let's come up with 
> suggestions and guidelines for how to fix these problems rather than 
> creating a more complicated system most users won't use.

Ok, the attribute isn't deprecated anymore, just optional. I added a note 
saying it had problems. But I'm still tempted to just go back to 
deprecating it and forgetting the whole thing.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'