RE: Seeking guidance...

You can use the mouse to decide if you want to give focus to a form input,
but it doesn't really work for a link or button - there is an ill-defined
notion of how to focus on these with a mouse, but in practise mouseovers are
interpreted as focus (more or less).

One explores by moving around the focus. But then, focus is only a measure of
what you are looking at. You could move the viewport, for example by
scrolling, without having to move the focus. But it isn't usually a usability
win since it requires you to remember what had focus.

Charles

On Fri, 7 Apr 2000, Marjolein Katsma wrote:

  Charles,
  
  At 10:20 2000-04-07 -0400, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
  >No, onFocus (in the current specification) does not replace onMouseover in
  >current versions of HTML (sadly).
  
  Maybe I'm missing something but I don't see how it could. The two are independent and have quite different roles. I can give focus to a link or a form input field, by selecting it (with mouse or keyboard) while hovering a mouse triggers the onMouseover event but does not give focus. As a user, I could use the onMouseover to decide whether I am *going* to give foucus to that element by clicking it or not.
  
  >In the upcoming DOM work, there is a new focusin/focusout event that is
  >expected to cover mouseovers as well as keyboard-based focus.
  
  Sounds confusing to me - then how does one explore without giving / changing focus?
  
  
  >Charles McCN
  
  Cheers,
  
  
  Marjolein Katsma
  HomeSite Help - http://hshelp.com/
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--
Charles McCathieNevile    mailto:charles@w3.org    phone: +61 (0) 409 134 136
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative                      http://www.w3.org/WAI
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Received on Friday, 7 April 2000 14:00:01 UTC