Re: [STYLE GUIDE] Spinner revisited

>
> The 
> spinner is an input field with associated up and down arrows ... home and end are currently used within an 
> input field to move the caret to the beginning or end of the field.  Will 
> this confuse people?
That's the key:  do users perceive this widget as a text input field or 
as a spinner (or, I suppose, as a composite thing called "spinner" that 
has a text field as one of its parts)?  What does an AT report to the 
user given the @role 'spinbutton'?

If it is perceived qua spinner and not at all as a text field, then, I 
would think, users won't expect home and end to behave as cursor 
navigation keystrokes.

If it is perceived as a text input field and home/end are commonly used 
to move to the ends of the textbox, then the style guide is problematic.

I don't know what users' mental model is for spinners.  My experience is 
that spinners are rarely used.  I found one in the Mac "Energy Saver" 
system preferences "Schedule..." section, and another in "Date and 
Time", where spinners are used to set time values.  None of home, end, 
pageup, nor pagedown did anything.  Left/right cursor keys moved left 
and right within the text box, up/down increased/decreased the value, 
and other keystrokes allowed entering values directly.

If the style guide is changed, then I suggest that keystrokes for 
quickly attaining the min and max values of the spinner's range.  That's 
the point of the home/end currently -- to navigate quickly to the ends 
of the range.

-- 
;;;;joseph

'This is not war -- this is pest control!'
      - "Doomsday", Dalek Leader -

Received on Tuesday, 8 July 2008 14:42:44 UTC