Re: Which is it? - widget keynav

This is a tough nut to crack. We are trying to make web apps behave like 
desktop apps and the precedent set forth by various OSes has been 
discord in some areas of navigation. So do we emulate the desktop to the 
point where web apps also vary from platform to platform or do we try to 
extract what a best practice is. Of course we go with a single best 
practice. That, unfortunately, means there will be winners and losers. 
For the losers there is the loss of potentially years of muscle memory 
from consistent object-action bindings. Obviously the choices will be 
hard and should not be driven by platform dominance, but we must either 
choose unity and consistency between browsers/platforms or it the same 
old dichotomy all over again. One of the alluring aspects of the web was 
platform or user-agent agnosticism. Some suffering by some users now for 
a consistent widget behavior for everyone later seems a worthy cost. The 
age old common good argument.

CB

Joseph Scheuhammer wrote:
>
>>
>> As an example, many people already understand how to operate a treeview
>> from the MS OS.  Therefore it makes sense to mimic that keyboard
>> behavior in the same type of widget on the web.
>
> Except...those people who use Macs.  They are used to its treeview key 
> navigation, so it seem odd to them to switch gears to the web tree 
> widget.
>
> Which doesn't answer the question re: sticking to the platform's key 
> navigation vs. overriding.  It just adds fuel to fire (to switch 
> metaphors).
>

Received on Thursday, 28 February 2008 22:27:28 UTC