Re: Keyboard navigation in a web page

As a linux Netscape user there are a number of areas where improvement is
needed.

The first is the ablity to tab consistently between active elements.

The second is the ability to fire mouseover, mouseout, click, etc events from
teh keyboard consistently. (The Last Call Working Draft of DOM at
http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-DOM-Level-2 introduces a new event model, and
extensive discussion of this has taken place in the DOM and WAI Protocols and
Formats Groups, as well as some in the User Agent Group and others, over the
last year)

The third is the ability to use the menus from the keyboard - Although teh
features for which shortcuts are defined work alright (unless they conflict
with key bindings in my X setup - unfortunately I have not figured out how to
change them, so I have to change my own setup instead).

The fourth would be the ability to select text using the keyboard standards
for the platform.

(Actually some of these functions, but not the event triggers, are already
implemented in Composer, making it much nicer to use as a keyboard-accessible
browser).

I like the fact that I can scroll up or down with the keyboard at any time,
and don't have to wait for the page to have loaded.

If there was decent screen-reader integration to a Netscape browser it would
be good to have the ability to navigate around the page generally - not just
to the bottom of a table, but within the table, up and down by cells.

Regards

Charles McCN

On Wed, 6 Oct 1999, Lakespur Roca wrote:

  I didn't get a response to my inquiry earlier so I thought I'd try again
  but being more specific.
  
  Netscape is working as we speak on a new browser. I have the
  responsibility of finding where the keyboard navigation through a web
  page can be fixed or improved. What I would like to know from you is are
  there specific areas where keyboard navigation through a page can be
  improved or breaks.
  Do you want a to skip to the bottom of a table? Are the methods of
  visually showing what has focus easy to see? Does tabbing through the
  items in a page work for you? What do you think about Shift+Tab to "Tab"
  backwards through a page? Is there something that works real well that
  you don't want touched? These are the kinds of things I would like to
  know.
  
  Lake Roca
  Usability Engineer
  Netscape communications
  
  
  

--Charles McCathieNevile            mailto:charles@w3.org
phone: +1 617 258 0992   http://www.w3.org/People/Charles
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative    http://www.w3.org/WAI
MIT/LCS  -  545 Technology sq., Cambridge MA, 02139,  USA

Received on Wednesday, 6 October 1999 18:10:06 UTC