RE: techniques for author-defined UI controls

At 11:42 AM 11/3/99 Denis Anson wrote:
>As far as activating elements via AccessKey in a well-documented and
>consistent manner, does this mean between agents, or within a single agent?
>As I understand it, 

aloha, denis!

you are quite right in observing that quote HTML 4.0 does not specify the
behavior of AccessKey,just the general concept of what it should do unquote,
which is why i have sought to place the onus upon the UA to define

a) how ACCESSKEYs will be invoked

b) what action will be taken upon the invocation of an ACCESSKEY (i.e. the link
followed slash form control toggled or  activated or whether focus is simply
moved to the element for which the ACCESSKEY has been defined)

c) how to expose to the user, in a device independent manner, the presence of
ACCESSKEYs in the document currently being rendered

and d) a mechanism to resolve conflicting keybindings (in a cascading manner,
according to the user's preferences)

obviously, none of the above make sense unless they are well documented by the
UA...

and, while consistency of the keystroke combination that invokes the ACCESSKEY
cannot be expected across platforms, consistency of action-upon-invocation CAN
and MUST be expected, not only across platforms, but from release to release of
a UA

gregory.


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He that lives on Hope, dies farting
     -- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1763
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Gregory J. Rosmaita <unagi69@concentric.net>
   WebMaster and Minister of Propaganda, VICUG NYC
        <http://www.hicom.net/~oedipus/vicug/index.html>
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Received on Wednesday, 3 November 1999 12:03:36 UTC