Re: [w3ctag/design-reviews] Incubation: Scoped Focusgroup (Issue #1152)

janewman left a comment (w3ctag/design-reviews#1152)

> Hi [@janewman](https://github.com/janewman), thanks for your latest updates. The question about modifier keys in particular is a good one! It seems that you've addressed the concerns, and haven't had any pushback. We have a few more thoughts/questions...
> 
> 1. Please could you update the explainer with a mention of (or even just a link to) [the considerations you added around modifier keys](https://github.com/whatwg/html/pull/11723/changes/1017afbf2920147b4658a986d71813936e431a57)? (We think such a mention would assist future reviewers.)
> 2. There was a question about spatial navigation that has been raised in community discussion, and we're not sure if it's been answered: some systems provide a spatial navigation mode (e.g. via D-pad, or arrow keys). Some of those may be due to the type of device (e.g. TV), or maybe it's a way to provide a different means of navigation as an assistive technology. How might that fit in with this proposal?
>    
>    * Specifically: [a question was raised about how this may interact with the proposed CSS Spatial Navigation](https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/11641#issuecomment-4028039082)

I've added the relevant sections to the explainer, see: [Modifier Keys](https://open-ui.org/components/scoped-focusgroup.explainer/#modifier-keys) and [CSS spatial navigation](https://open-ui.org/components/scoped-focusgroup.explainer/#css-spatial-navigation)

Regarding how these features work together, outside of what I covered in the explainer, I thought that spatial navigation and focusgroup compose quite well when used together today. On a site with lots of interactive elements powered by focusgroup, spatial navigation managed focus across the page, while focusgroup took over for each control. In my opinion, this gives a good mix of UA +user defined movement for navigating across the page, while giving authors the ability to control the focus behavior of their interactive controls. 
(I used this [demo site I put together](https://microsoftedge.github.io/Demos/focusgroup/index.html) to test)

When I imagine the future of keyboard focus navigation on the web, I see spatial navigation being a setting a user or user agent can turn on, with nice customization to suite the user depending on what device they are using, and with focusgroup being a more controlled interaction, where authors and users can rely on a consistent behavior. This aligns with the expectation that when spatial navigation is enabled, a user can use the keyboard to navigate on any page, while focusgroup is more about authors being able to provide a consistent focus behavior on their controls, without needing JavaScript (except for selection/activation of course).

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