Re: [DHTML Style Guide] Tablist: why alt+del?

I spent quite a bit of time trying to implement keyboard shortcuts that 
didn't interfere with either the OS, browser or AT and after doing a lot 
of testing with XP, Jaws, IE and FF the available list was very very 
short. I believe one of the ideas going into the DHTML style guide was 
that ARIA would allow an AT to know that the user had focus on a widget 
and get out of the way. Without that it would be nearly impossible to 
find a set that works cross-AT, cross-browser and cross-platform. Do Mac 
Voiceover users care that control-J jumps cells with Jaws on Windows? Do 
Windows users care that voiceover users jump between headers using 
control+alt+h? I suggest that the set of available key combinations that 
are as agnostic as the web sites we want to implement them on is nearly 
null. In light of that, a clean slate approach seems appropriate. Given 
no constraints on keystrokes other than trying to give a nod to what is 
common (familiar) in existing implementations to lower cognitive load, 
what would make the most sense for navigating and controlling widgets? I 
think this was the philosophy behind the choices made in the style 
guide. Obviously implementations may have to deviate from the guide and 
that's to be expected. If you must support IE6 then you can't stop 
bubbling to the browser, you can't override its defined keyboard 
commands and will probably have to make some different choices. On other 
browsers where bubbling is controllable, you might still think twice 
before re-defining what control-w does. It's just hard to rhyme with the 
past and still make sensible choices for the future.

CB

David Bolter wrote:
> Joseph Scheuhammer wrote:
>   
>> David Bolter wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> Is anyone on this list collecting user data on Web2.0 Ux that could
>>> inform this thread?
>>>   
>>>       
>> While not Ux data, this old Mozilla bug is noteworthy:
>> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=108973#c0
>>
>> In the early days of Mozilla/FF tabbed browsing, users were
>> surprised/annoyed by the browser window closing when they used cntl+w
>> to close the active tab.  The fix was to handle cntl+w at the tab level.
>>
>>     
>
> Yep, and I agree we should swallow ctrl+w, just like we do in dijit
> tabpanels (and on tabs). Looks like I added that in September 2007.
>
> Regarding Ux I think I was referring more to another part of the thread
> (that got chopped).
>
> cheers,
> David
>
>
>