[STYLEGUIDE] Tab Panel discussion

There is a proposal for tab panel behavior in the wiki [1]. The style 
guide working group has discussed tab pane to some extent and I believe we 
agree that the panel would become active when the tab receives focus.   I 
updated the key behavior section with the following information:

tab - only the active tab is in the tab order. The user reaches the tabbed 
panel component by pressing the tab key until the active tab title 
receives focus. 

left arrow - with focus on a tab, pressing the left arrow will move focus 
to the previous tab in the tab list and activate that tab. Pressing the 
left arrow when the focus is on the first tab in the tab list will move 
focus and activate the last tab in the list. 

right arrow - with focus on a tab, pressing the right arrow will move 
focus to the next tab in the tab list and activate that tab. Pressing the 
right arrow when the focus is on the last tab in the tab list will move 
focus to and activate the first tab in the list.
 
ctrl-up arrow -with focus anywhere within the tab panel, pressing ctrl-up 
arrow will move focus to the tab for that panel. This is not standard 
behavior - is this something we want to implement? Is it necessary if we 
provide a mechanism to change the active tab? Similar to 
ctrl-pageup/pagedown in Firefox to switch tabs?
 
alt-del - When deletion is allowed, with focus anywhere within the tab 
panel, pressing alt-del will delete the current tab and tab panel from the 
tabbed interface control. If additional tabs remain in the tabbed 
interface, focus goes to the next tab in the tab list. An alternative to 
providing a keystroke to close a tab is to provide a context menu that is 
associated with the tab title. When focus is on the tab, pressing 
shift-F10 or pressing the right mouse button will open a context menu with 
the close choice 

NEW ctrl-pageup - When focus is inside of a tab panel, pressing 
ctrl-pageup moves focus to the tab of the previous tab in the tab list and 
activates that tab. When focus is in the first tab panel in the tab list, 
pressing ctrl-pageup will move focus to the last tab in the tab list and 
activate that tab. 
NEW ctrl-pagedown - When focus is inside of a tab panel, pressing 
ctrl-pagedown moves focus to the tab of the next tab in the tab list and 
activates that tab. When focus is in the last tab panel in the tab list, 
pressing ctrl-pageup will move focus to the first tab in the tab list and 
activate that tab. 
Regarding ctrl-pageup/pagedown. This is currently implement in Firefox to 
move between browser tabs. Firefox also supports ctrl-tab and 
ctrl-shift-tab to move between tabs. Internet Explorer 7 also uses 
ctrl-tab and ctrl-shift-tab. I (Becky) see advantages to using 
ctrl-pageup/pagedown as the keys to change tabs since it is a recognizable 
keystroke to at least Firefox users and is also supported by the Windows 
operating system to move between panels in a tabbed dialog. The problem is 
that if the user is within a tabbed interface control on a Web page, they 
can not easily switch browser tabs without first moving focus outside of 
the tabbed interface control. This may be acceptable. The other issue is 
if the entire Web page is a tabbed interface control - in that case the 
user could not ever switch browser tabs unless the control on the Web page 
ignored the ctlr-pageup/pagedown keypress (and thus letting the browser 
access it) when the first or last tab was reached. 
I am looking for feedback for the last three proposals: using ctrl-up 
arrow to move focus from within the tab panel back to the tab; Using 
alt-del or a context menu to delete a tab from the tab list; using 
ctrl-pageup and ctrl-pagedown to move between keys. 
I prefer to implement  ctrl-pageup and ctrl-pagedown to move between keys 
and to not implement ctrl-up arrow behavior.  I also prefer the idea of 
using a context menu to provide a close or delete option for tabs rather 
than inventing the new alt-del key sequence.   Are there other suggestions 
or feedback? 
thanks.

[1] http://weba11y.com/styleguide/index.php?title=Tab_Panel

Becky Gibson
Web Accessibility Architect
                                                       
IBM Emerging Internet Technologies
5 Technology Park Drive
Westford, MA 01886
Voice: 978 399-6101; t/l 333-6101
Email: gibsonb@us.ibm.com

Received on Tuesday, 29 May 2007 21:13:51 UTC