Re: Fwd: accesskey usage Re: Proposal for Keyboard Shortcuts for HTML5

Hi Garrett,

On Sat, 22 Sep 2007 10:39:22 +0200, Garrett Smith <dhtmlkitchen@gmail.com>  
wrote:

...
> The problem is that accesskey doesn't appear in the document. It's
> like having links that you can't see. Accesskey visibility is hidden.
...
> You can't see what has a kbd shortcut or what that shortcut is.

Right. This is indeed a problem that browsers should deal with... In  
Opera, if you press shift-esc in current versions you get to see  
something. In iCab you get to see something if you turn on accessey  
support (or use an old version where it was automatically on). In some old  
phone browsers you get something too.

> I like underlining for accesskey.

I don't because I use underlining for links, and because the relevant  
letter may or may not appear.

> If accesskey were exposed to CSS, it would allow authors to provide a
> more accessible accesskey. It wouldn't just be one of those annoying
> things you have to do for 508.

It is exposed by spec. A few years ago I first pointed out that you can use

*[accesskey]:after {content: '<' attr('accesskey') '>'}

(I think the syntax is OK) in CSS2 - the spec is almost a decade old. The  
problem is that while opera has supported it for ages, a lot of browsers  
have only caught up recently or still don't support enough CSS to do this  
:(

It is also the case that the author really shouldn't document the actual  
key assigned, since the UA may very well change it in order to avoid  
suprising the user by breaking the normal UI.

cheers

Chaals

-- 
   Charles McCathieNevile, Opera Software: Standards Group
   hablo español  -  je parle français  -  jeg lærer norsk
chaals@opera.com   http://snapshot.opera.com - Kestrel (9.5α1)

Received on Saturday, 22 September 2007 14:27:38 UTC