- From: Charles McCathieNevile <chaals@opera.com>
- Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2010 17:09:29 +0100
- To: "Jim Allan" <jimallan@tsbvi.edu>
- Cc: "UAWG list" <w3c-wai-ua@w3.org>
On Thu, 02 Dec 2010 17:02:30 +0100, Jim Allan <jimallan@tsbvi.edu> wrote: > Hello Chaals, > Read the thread with great interest. This is excellent news. Updating > my opera now. tried to get the documentation but the link does not > work, nor does the link from the extension download page. I also tried > http://my.opera.com/chaals/axcesskey and > http://my.opera.com/chaals/accesskey to no avail. Sorry, should be http://my.opera.com/chaals/blog/excesskey cheers > More thought later, when I have played with it. > Jim > > On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 3:28 AM, Charles McCathieNevile > <chaals@opera.com> wrote: >> Hi folks, >> >> about a decade ago when I was actively involved here I used to waffle >> on a >> lot about accesskey... In UAAG 1 there ended up some requirement about >> how >> current interface bindings should be available to the author, and >> configurable, which was a generalisation (probably to the point of >> incomprehensibility) about how accesskeys *should* be handled. >> >> Recently I put this in to practice as an extension to Opera. In order >> to see >> it working you need the Opera 11 beta, and then you can get it from >> https://addons.labs.opera.com/addons/extensions/details/excesskey/?display=en >> - sorry screenreader folks, the documentation at >> http://my.opera.com/chaals/excesskey is pretty accessible but the Beta >> version of Opera is more or less unusable, especially the extension >> stuff, >> with a screenreader ;(. >> >> It is a work in progress. But it clarified a bunch of things for me >> (apart >> from the fact that I am not a brilliant developer and need to do a >> whole lot >> more work ;) ). >> >> - accesskeys are really handy, if you know when they are there and >> discover >> the sites that use them well (*to do: allow users to mark a site as >> 'don't >> bother' so a different icon shows.) >> - It really matters whether you can choose the keys. I made a test page >> that >> uses ł,आ,س,ф,± as accesskeys - all of which are things I know how to >> generate and are from time to time reasonable keys to use. (I also used >> ☆ >> and ✐ to see what happens ;) ). The common english-language convention >> of >> using numbers is terrible for french people who use the traditional >> 'azerty' >> layout, but it would make perfect sense for them to use &é"'(§è!çà >> which are >> the natural defaults for the same physical keys. Yet many french people >> use >> english sites, and to some extent vice versa. >> - it makes perfect sense to allow accesskey='say this please', if you >> shift >> the responsibility for assigning keys to the User Agent (which you need >> to >> do in order to allow the user to decide what keys they will use). >> Because I >> have already begun sketching out an architecture that lets you assign >> non-keyboard interactions, and one obvious one is voice where whole >> words or >> phrases are *better* than single letters. >> - if you can discover what accesskeys are there before you activate >> them, it >> makes much more sense to have them directly activate a link or control >> than >> just focus it, where that's a logical thing to do. Of course it's not >> applicable to text input boxes :) >> - shift-esc is not a great activation shortcut for the accesskey menu. I >> remap mine to '.' which is more convenient for me (sits between >> search-in-page and search-for-links). YMMV. >> >> The basic idea is this: >> 1. There is a status indicator to tell you if there are accesskeys >> defined >> in the page. This is an improvement on Opera's accesskey menu (normally >> activated by shift-esc) which will list the accesskeys defined, or tell >> you >> there are none. Which in turn is an improvement on guessing what they >> might >> be or where they might be described. >> >> 2. The extension actually cleans up the accesskeys so they can be fired >> - >> i.e. make sure that each is a single unique character (Opera has a bug >> where >> accesskey="oops" will break the accesskey menu, and while you can >> navigate >> the menu with the mouse it doesn't deal nicely with two uses of the same >> key). >> >> 3. In the preferences (open extension manager, right click on the funny >> cog >> wheel next to the 'uninstall button') you can select the keys that you >> want >> to be used to assign accesskeys. For example, numbers are not very >> helpful >> for users of french azerty keyboards, since you need to use shift to >> produce >> them. And cyrillic is more useful for many russian users since those >> are the >> letters they produce by default. It has been tested with cyrillic, >> arabic, >> and various other wierd characters. >> >> As the documentation explains, right now it uses Opera's native >> accesskey >> menu, but for various reasons I am tempted to try and replace that. But >> first I want to make some improvements in the underlying code and >> capabilities - so it won't get any prettiness enhancements for a while. >> >> cheers >> >> Chaals >> >> -- >> Charles McCathieNevile Opera Software, Standards Group >> je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg lærer norsk >> http://my.opera.com/chaals Try Opera: http://www.opera.com >> >> > > > -- Charles McCathieNevile Opera Software, Standards Group je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg lærer norsk http://my.opera.com/chaals Try Opera: http://www.opera.com
Received on Thursday, 2 December 2010 16:10:16 UTC