[whatwg] Accesskey in Web Forms 2

Laurens Holst lholst at students.cs.uu.nl
Fri Nov 12 14:27:01 PST 2004


Matthew Raymond wrote:
>> http://juima.org/events/pic.asp?picid=1649 (Finally something
>> public I can link to.) :P

That could have been implemented much better with Javascript, which
wouldn't require you to press ALT with the keys.


> I think you've hit the problem on the nail. We can't expect users to
>  create their own shortcuts any more than we can expect them to
> create customized stylesheets for the web pages they most frequently
> use. While in both cases power users could significantly benefit from
> such functionality, most users probably wouldn't know the
> functionality existed unless they were told about it, and even then
> they wouldn't use it most of the time.

Do you think it is different for access keys? They are even more
useless. Most people have no clue about the existence of access keys,
and when you do you still have to depend on the page's author to both
have 1. implemented them, and 2. indicated which keys to use.


> I don't think that author could provide any meaningful suggestions.
> All the standard access keys should already have key binding and for
> the couple of remaining access points there's no way for page author
> to correctly guess even a one free key. Plus limiting access points
> to keys would prevent me from using mouse gestures to activate access
> points, for example.

I agree.

Though suggestions would perhaps make it easier for the user to pick a 
choice, instead of having to make one up himself (imagine, having to 
think for yourself ;p)... I'm unsure. However, the additional markup 
involved seems a little troublesome (though a list of space-separated 
values would seem ok). In any case, the access key should be suggestive, 
nothing more.


~Grauw

-- 
Ushiko-san! Kimi wa doushite, Ushiko-san!!



More information about the whatwg mailing list