Re: [STYLE GUIDE] Spinner revisited

So, I am convinced that if you have an object that is marked with a role 
of spinbox, the user would not be surprised (and hopefully pleased) if 
pressing the home key sets the value to the minimum and pressing the end 
key sets the value to the maximum. But, what if there is no min and/or no 
max value specified? Should the home and/or end key be ignored or should 
it function as normal and move the cursor. For consistency I think it 
should be ignored. 

With regards to Earl's comment about the number of entries, I don't think 
we should change the behavior based on the number of entries as that would 
likely be confusing. 

-becky


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 07/09/2008 04:07:06 AM:

> 
> Hi;
> 
> I'm back, sorry for the unavoidable absence - I was out.
> 
> Perhaps home/end should move to first/last entry until you start editing 

>   the current entry [if it is an editable field] after that, home/end 
> would take you to the beginning/end of the current entry.
> 
> Spinners are meant to have short entries in them in my experience. I 
> agree with Joseph, maybe it should be left/right [assumes horizontal 
> orientation] should move you in the current entry and home/end, up/down, 

> page up/down should spin the spinner. [1] It would seem to me it is 
> better to offer large decrement jumps to quickly change to higher/lower 
> values than to restrict the user to using arrow keys.
> 
> Having said this, Windows is a known paradigm and it's a lot less 
> programming to just support up/down, left/right arrow keys... [2]
> 
> [1] seems best to me if spinners might frequently contain many entries. 
> [2] is probably best if spinners are typically meant contain few 
> entries. Pulling a break number out of my wazoo, maybe 10 or less 
> typically contained in a spinner favors [2] while regularly 10 or 
> greater favors [1].
> 
> Anyone know the max number of entries recommended to be contained in 
> spinners?
> 
> ej
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Joseph Scheuhammer wrote:
> > 
> >>
> >> 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.
> > 
>

Received on Thursday, 10 July 2008 19:28:03 UTC