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Re: Tabindexes

for

From: Hoffman, David
Date: Dec 16, 2004 8:44AM


This technique was featured by Moore and Matthews at UPA 2004. What are the
downsides?

-----Original Message-----
From: sethmr [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ]
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2004 8:31 AM
To: WebAIM Discussion List
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Tabindexes




On Dec 15, 2004, at 10:05 PM, tdw wrote:

>
> Putting tabindex on your links prevents me from skipping your
> navigation (FF 1.0/Mac). What this means is that I have to tab
> through your entire navigation before getting to the content =/

Currently tabbing through the page should take you through the top 7 or
8 links of the nav bar but skip the links in the submenu until you tab
to the bottom of the page.

> Because you are using CSS why not change the html source order to
> something like:
>
> 1. skip links [main content, navigation]
> 2. content
> 3. main nav
> 4. search
> 5. secondary nav.
>
> that way it can appear the same as you have it, but tabbing will work
> in a logical manner. I can choose navigation or content and my
> keyboard focus will follow rather than tabbing through every link on
> the page.

Source order vs. css-p is something I really don't want to deal with.
There are too many downsides. And in any case I don't think it would
work with my menu system which is floated left.

>
> Also, since you are considering keyboard users add :focus to your
> style sheet, and for IE :active so I can get some feedback as to where
> I am in your document.
>
Not sure what you mean here. Is this some proprietary Microsoft
extension?

Thanks, Terence. I appreciate your comments.

seth

> Terrence Wood.
>
> On 2004-12-16 10:57 AM, sethmr wrote:
>> Hi,
>> I'd like to use tab indexes to make keyboard navigation a little
>> easier in the template I'm building.
>> I can't think of any downside to this method. What am I missing?
>>
> --
> "You know you've achieved perfection in design, not when you have
> nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away."
> -Antoine de Saint-Exupery
>
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