[whatwg] Scoped tabindex proposal

Simon Pieters zcorpan at hotmail.com
Sat Sep 2 09:17:47 PDT 2006


Hi,

From: Aaron Leventhal <aaronlev at moonset.net>
>tabindex="-1" doesn't just remove items from the tab order. It also makes 
>items focusable via mouse click or script, which is important when 
>designing custom container widgets like spreadsheets, etc. via Javascript. 
>In fact any negative value does it.

Indeed.

>Don't try to overload the tabindex attribute.

tabindex="scoped" is overloading indeed, but changing the tab order 
algorithm isn't really overloading the tabindex attribute (if we would say 
that all tabindex elements are scoping elements).

>First, the browsers currently optimize it knowing that it's an integer.

I agree that tabindex should still be a long (and not DOMString).

>Second, the scoping is orthogonal.

Then it would be better to have a separate attribute. That also allows the 
use of the current tab order for nested tabindex elements, and the ability 
to declare unfocusable scoping elements.

>Third, magic values are less readable. It's voodoo.

Ok.

Regards,
Simon Pieters





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