[whatwg] accesskey

[Charles McCathieNevile]

On Tue, 29 Jan 2008 03:31:46 +1100, Krzysztof Żelechowski  
<giecrilj at stegny.2a.pl> wrote:

> Dnia 25-01-2008, Pt o godzinie 23:06 -0500, Jean-Nicolas Boulay
> Desjardins pisze:
...
>> But what would happend if this was to happend:
>>
>> <a href="bob.html" accesskey="b">Bob web page</a>
>> <a href="alex.html" accesskey="b">Alex web page</a>
>>
>> Again this is allowed in the present web standard, but if you think
>> about it its illogical, on what bases thus the browser decide wich one
>> to access first or should it open the tow?
>
> The visible and enabled elements marked with the same access key
> should take focus in turn and in page order.

Indeed...

User agents must, in any case, be free to reassign access methods (for  
example using a key other than the one the author suggested). This is one  
reason they might do that (a more common reason would be that there isn't  
a readily available 語 key...). Since it is critical user agents can do  
this, user agents, not authors, should be responsible for telling the user  
how to activate the things that have access keys. (This was envisioned in  
the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines, where it has its own checkpoint  
[1]).

So the user agent can actually decide to leave the keys as they are and  
allow cycling through them (IE does this in some versions at least), or  
change the key (or other behaviour) that triggers the effect and of course  
make it clear to the user what the actual activation method is.

> If the element is an active element,
> its action should not be performed.

Hmmm. I am not sure about this. In general, I prefer an acceskey mechanism  
that activates controls (although it should be configurable), and a user  
agent that just re-maps doubled accesskeys. I certainly don't think that  
we should be overly prescriptive about how to handle the situation. This  
is, after all, primarily a question of user interface design, not markup  
design.

cheers

chaals

-- 
Charles McCathieNevile  Opera Software, Standards Group
     je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg lærer norsk
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