RE: Navigation without side-effects

Yes, but Aaron mis-represented the function asked.  It is not that the focus
doesn't go to the element.  It is that the onFocus response doesn't fire right
away when this happens.  Think of it as anaesthesia, or the interpolation of a
process step.

The desire is to break the instantaneous and automatic link between the state
transition where an element gains focus and the firing of a nominally onFocus
event response.

It is an adjusted protocol for the response to the action, not a change in the
action.  The element truly gains focus, as defined by the stable rules about
where keyboard events act, etc.

A possibly appropriate technique would be to instantly display a confirm
dialog
gating the onFocus response, when one places the focus on an element for which
there is such a response defined.

Al

 At 09:25 AM 2001-03-06 -0800, Denis Anson wrote:
>Aaron,
>
>This gets back to the concept of "point of regard."  Current browser
>technology generally doesn't have a separate pointer for focus and point of
>regard, which can be a signficant shortcoming.  The ability to navigate
>through a page with a lot of content between links requires some pointer,
>other than focus, to indicate current location.
>
>Moving a "point-of-regard" indicator to an element wouldn't activate any
>events, since it isn't the same as the mouse or the focus.
>
>Denis Anson
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: w3c-wai-ua-request@w3.org
[<mailto:w3c-wai-ua-request@w3.org%5DOn>mailto:w3c-wai-ua-request@w3.org]On
>Behalf Of Aaron Leventhal
>Sent: Monday, March 05, 2001 6:25 PM
>To: w3c-wai-ui@w3.org
>Subject: Navigation without side-effects
>
>
>Apologies for all the emails, I'm going through my meeting notes ....
>
>At the meeting we discussed a feature for being able to navigate without
>setting off any event handlers.
>This means  users would need to be able to move to a new element without
>the focus going to that element.
>I was told this is probably only useful for blind users.
>
>I can only assume that the last focused element would still be visible
>from the CSS :focus pseudo class style binding.
>
>Would it not be necessary to make the element that you'ved moved to, but
>isn't focused, visible?
>I don't remember what we call that, but there's not CSS concept for it,
>so I'm not sure how we'd allow the user to configure the appearance of
>it. In addition you'd have the confusion of 2 different elements with a
>different visual indications of having the user's attention.
>
>Thoughts?
>
>Aaron
>

Received on Tuesday, 6 March 2001 11:53:42 UTC