Re: Question about a menubutton with a default action

Marco,

The fact that there are 2 click targets with 2 different purposes is a 
very important aspect of this problem to consider. There really are 2 
controls, not one. I think we need to be very careful with the idea of 
combining them into one control for keyboard users. It creates high 
potential for user mistakes. Each of these functions (performing a command 
like remember password and opening a menu of other related commands) needs 
its own focusable element in the UI just like it needs a separately 
clickable target. For clarity, each function needs its own label and 
properties.

I strongly agree that there are implementation problems with this kind of 
control in Firefox. However, I think the two biggest problems are:
1. access to the buttons is time dependent; the buttons seem to disappear, 
or at least access to them goes away.
2. An access key is required. There is a general lack of keyboard access 
and discovery for not only buttons like remember password but all toolbar 
buttons in the header area of the browser.

I do not think the fact that there are 2 tab stops for the remember 
password control is necessarily a problem. It is certainly not ideal, but 
the way to improve it 
depends on how keyboard access to the toolbar area in Firefox would be 
designed.

I would like to see a single tab stop for each functional set of buttons 
in the header frame. Within a set, which would have role toolbar, the user 
would left/right arrow to the different buttons within that toolbar. 
Tabbing from address bar would go to search then to the first button in 
the first toolbar. The remember password command button would be in one of 
these toolbars in the header. The "Other password options" menu button, 
which would look like a down arrow,  would be right next to the remember 
password button.

Matt King
IBM Senior Technical Staff Member
I/T Chief Accessibility Strategist
IBM BT/CIO - Global Workforce and Web Process Enablement 
Phone: (503) 578-2329, Tie line: 731-7398
mattking@us.ibm.com



From:   Marco Zehe <marco.zehe@gmail.com>
To:     "W3C WAI Protocols & Formats" <public-pfwg@w3.org>, 
Date:   08/08/2014 06:04 AM
Subject:        Question about a menubutton with a default action



Hi there!

I need some advice here... You know in Firefox, we have these doorhangers 
that pop up when, for example, a site asks you if you want to save a 
password. The button to save the password is actually a menu button with a 
default action, and a downward pointing arrow to open a menu of more 
options. That menu doesn't currently contain the default action. So the 
mouse interaction is: Click on the left side, e. g. the button label, 
performs the default action of saving the password. Clicking on the 
downard pointing arrow will open the popup menu.

The current keyboard interaction is buggy at best. The access key doesn't 
work correctly, and the button has two tab stops, one for the menu button 
piece, one for the default action.

Now, I've read up on the default expected behavior for menubuttons, but 
these don't cover the case of a menu button that also has a default 
action. Nor is there a different role available in IA2 or other platform 
APIs that I know of that would cover this scenario in a way that the end 
user immediately knows what's going on.

My first reaction to the question of how this interaction should be, was 
this:

1.      Pressing the access key should focus the menubutton, but not 
activate anything.
2.      Space should activate the default action.
3.      Down Arrow should open the menu.
The problem here is that current best practices suggest that both space 
and down arrow pop up the menu. And there is no good way to actually tell 
the user that space would, in this case, do the default action and set 
focus back on the page afterwards.
Any ideas or suggestion on how to best solve this would be appreciated. We 
could do an ARIA description for this particular button that tells the 
users on focus that space will submit the default action, and down arrow 
opens the menu for more options. But the best way would be if we had a 
best practices guide somewhere that would include this special scenario, 
or settle on a good way forward for these in general.
Welcoming your comments!
Marco