Re: [g-a-devel]clarification needed on Keyboard Navigation among buttons.

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

Narayana Pattipati wrote:
> 
> I have a doubt in Keyboard Navigation among buttons. In case of
> gnome-calculator(gcharmap also), there are many rows and columns of
> buttons placed in a box.
>
> what about the navigation across rows.?  Using Tab/Shift +Tab,
> navigation is possible across the rows.
> Should this be provided using Left/Right arrow keys also? I feel,
> there are two possibilities.
> One is to allow user to navigate to a next/previous row with Right/Left
> arrows. This is good because
> user can navigate among buttons continously as he does with Tab. Another
> possibility is do NOT allow user
> to navigate across rows and give a beep when he tries to navigate past
> the last/first button in a row with Right/Left arrows.

I suppose there is also a third possibility, which is to wrap around but
keep the focus on the same row.  As a sighted user, that would perhaps
be the most intuitive to me, but I can imagine it might cause problems
for someone relying on a screenreader.

Do you have any thoughts on this Marc?  I think you've suggested in the
past that sometimes it's useful to stop with a beep when you hit the
beginning or end of a row or column of something, rather than wrapping
around.  Do you think it makes sense to do this with the arrow keys
here?  Or would you prefer to wrap focus around onto the next row of
buttons when you reach the end of a row?  (Perhaps only stopping with a
beep at the very first and very last buttons on the calculator, if at
all?)

> Also I did not understand the navigation among buttons in a column.
> Using Up/Down arrow user can navigate. When user
> navigates past the last/first in a column using down/up arrows, what is
> the expected behaviour?

I'll pass to Marc again :) What do you think, should pressing down arrow
stop at the top/bottom of a column of buttons, wrap to the next column,
or wrap but stay in the same column?

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson ireland sun com    Desktop Engineering Group
http://www.sun.ie                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems