Re: Accesskey - spec proposal

On Jul 3, 2007, at 12:22 PM, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:

> On Jul 3, 2007, at 4:08 AM, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 03 Jul 2007 12:30:20 +0200, Maciej Stachowiak  
>> <mjs@apple.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> It also seems that accesskey would not work very well on mobile  
>>> devices, which often have limited keyboards.
>>
>> The WAP forum (now OMA) obviously disagreed with you, since on WAP  
>> browsers accesskey (although restricted to numbers 1-9) is widely  
>> interoperable.
>
> 1) That's obviously not interoperable with the use of accesskey in  
> general web content (as opposed to waled garden "mobile web"  
> content), since the few real sites that use accesskey do not  
> restrict themselves to 1-9. Although if they did, it might be  
> easier to reserve keybindings for them...
>
> 2) How does this work on phones that have a full alphabetic  
> keyboard, but where you have to hold down a special numeric  
> modifier to type numbers in any context but the dialer? (For  
> instance, my Nokia e61). And does an unmodified 1-9 still act as a  
> rapid access key when typing into a text field on such a phone?
>
> 3) How does work on phones that are all touchscreen and don't even  
> show an onscreen keyboard most of the time?
>
> High-end phones are usually in categories 2 and 3, so it sounds  
> like the types of phones capable of rendering real web content well  
> haven't been considered in this design.

I don't think accesskey is meant to (nor should be required to) work  
on every device. To me this would be like saying we shouldn't add  
gestures to a browser on a phone because no one can use those  
gestures on their desktop browser. Instead they're forced to use the  
keyboard or the mouse. So I think the accesskey merely needs to  
address the problems/use-cases it wants to address. It doesn't have  
to meet the needs of all users working with all devices.

Take care,
Rob

Received on Tuesday, 3 July 2007 21:25:12 UTC