- From: David Woolley <david@djwhome.demon.co.uk>
- Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2005 08:01:01 +0100 (BST)
- To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
> >general, this is exactly what happens. However, if tabindex is used, this > >is not always the case. It can be very confusing to be reading in one > >point and then press tab and be taken to a completely different (possibly > >unrelated) point of the document. Another approach to navigating a The main reason for tabindex is to compensate for documents in which reading them in transmission order will cause you to jump about. E.g. if tables have been used to layout a form in columns. The real solution is to transmit the page in the correct order, but tabindex is a relatively low impact (for the graphic designer) workaround for not transmitting in reading order, and therefore something someone who is otherwise reluctant to compromise their visual design may be willing to add. If the document is transmitted in reading order (or rather form completion order) tabindex should be redundant, but not cause random jumping because it will just repeat the natural order. What does tend to be important is to use it on everything if you use it on anything. (I can foresee tabindex becoming more important if people start using SVG with WYSIWYG design methods. Even proper implementation of CSS positioning by IE could make it more likely that forms get pasted up, and transmitted, in a more or less random order, even so doing so is a bad thing.)
Received on Saturday, 9 July 2005 07:05:20 UTC