Re: closing a Tab?

I implemented a context menu for closable tabs in the dojo tab container. 
See the second tab panel example on [1]. The tabs with title "first" and 
"third" are closable. Pressing shift-F10 with focus on these tabs will 
bring up a context menu with "close".  If a tab is closable, pressing the 
delete key with focus on the title will delete the tab.  I thought this is 
what the style guide group had decided upon?  Although it would be nice if 
there was a way to indicate to the screen reader user that a tab (or any 
other item) was deletable without having the use the shift-F10 discovery 
mechanism. 

I based my implementation decision on the  DHTML Style Guide June 29, 2007 
meeting minutes [2]: 
TW: options other than DELETE - CTRL+F4 a possibility, have
to get comments on that - what we are saying is context menu and keyboard 
shortcut combo fine - great if had property so didn't have to use context 
menu, but maybe that's phase 2
So perhaps we made a decision but just didn't record it in the style 
guide?
[1] 
http://archive.dojotoolkit.org/nightly/dojotoolkit/dijit/tests/layout/test_TabContainer.html
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/wai-xtech/2007Jun/0130.html

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
blog: WebA11y


wai-xtech-request@w3.org wrote on 02/28/2008 03:06:06 PM:

> 
> 
> In the Best Practices we have a dangling question:
> 
> <quote
> cite="http://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/aria-practices/#TabPanel">
> 
> Unresolved at time of port from DHTML wiki: How to indicate that a 
> tab panel can be deleted? Visually a close icon can be provided in 
> the upper right hand corner of the tab which the user can click on to 
> delete the tab panel. Putting this close icon in the navigation 
> sequence would make extra navigation. Is there some way to indicate 
> to a non-visual user that a tab panel can be deleted with a defined 
> keystroke? Perhaps we can capture ctrl-w (the key used in Firefox and 
> IE 7) to close a tab? T * here is still the issue of the user knowing 
> that the tab is closable or not. Another option is to provide a 
> context menu. With focus on the tab title the user would press shift- 
> F10 to invoke a context menu - the context menu would have the close 
> option. In both of these cases if the tab can not be closed, it still 
> needs to capture the keystroke so that it doesn't get bubbled up and 
> handled by the browser. Retrieved from "http://www.weba11y.com/ 
> styleguide/index.php?title=Tab_Panel"
> 
> </quote>
> 
> Don,
> 
> Could you get this on the agenda for the Style
> Guide Group to suggest a preferred user experience?
> 
> Al
> 
> /satisfying ACTION-101
> 
> PS:  I didn't immediately find an answer at
> http://dev.aol.com/dhtml_style_guide#tabpanel
>

Received on Thursday, 28 February 2008 20:35:47 UTC