Re: Reserved keystrokes for browsers and operating system functions

On Wed, 19 Dec 2007 02:18:05 +0530, John Foliot <foliot@wats.ca> wrote:

> Jon Gunderson wrote:
>> Aaron,
>> Is there a list of key combinations that ARIA (Web 2.0) applications
>> should never use?
>>
>> There are already some conflicts in the best practices, in that case
>> the best practices says the Widget should win.

I'm not sure that the widget should win, actually. Changing the user  
interface locally is not exactly kind to the user, because of its  
unpredictability, poor discoverability, and difficulty to learn.

>> Are these combinations going to be OS and browser specific?

The reason why I suggest using the actual accesskey mechanism in HTML  
rather than directly trapping key events is that accesskey *can* be  
implemented not to clash.

My proposal to the HTML WG to improve the specification of accesskey would  
make it clearer that accesskeys can be remapped by the client, according  
to what is available. Thus you get (at least) the ability to re-use  
existing techniques - and while there are known hassles with gobbling  
accesskeys out of the UI in Internet Explorer, Opera doesn't have the  
problem already, Firefox is changing.

> Not sure if this helps any, but my list of reserved keystrokes, while now
> over 5 years old, is still pretty-much up-to-date.  Note that this list  
> was directly in relationship with Accesskey (ALT+___ in Windows
> environment), but might serve as a useful start (?).  See:
> http://www.wats.ca/show.php?contentid=43 (There is some i18n data there  
> too

John, there are no conflicts between Opera's accesskeys and alt - since  
you don't use alt to enable accesskeys in teh first place, but a single  
configurable command (default is shift-esc, but you can set it to anything  
you like).

> I also have a list of keystroke combinations directly related to JAWS
> [http://www.wats.ca/show.php?contentid=48], that also features other
> activator keys (for example "Prior Link" = SHIFT + TAB) if that is of any
> use.

cheers

Chaals


-- 
Charles McCathieNevile  Opera Software, Standards Group
     je parle français -- hablo español -- jeg lærer norsk
http://my.opera.com/chaals   Try Opera 9.5: http://snapshot.opera.com

Received on Saturday, 9 February 2008 08:22:25 UTC