Re: Tabs and groups of radio buttons

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

Padraig O'Briain wrote:

> In bug 53577 you propose that when any button in a group of mutually exclusive
> radio buttons has focus, pressing Tab should move focus to the control
> immediately after the last button in the group.
> 
> Is this use of Tab inconsistent with what is proposed elsewhere, i.e. Tab focus
> the next control in the navigation sequence?

I don't believe so-- a group of radio buttons is conceptually the same
as an option menu or a single-selection list, which you also tab into,
use the arrow keys to make a selection, and tab out of again.  If you
had Tab moving through each individual radio button in turn, we'd also
have to change the proposed functionality where focusing a radio button
also selects it, which I think would cause unnecessary extra effort for
the keyboard user.

(Java and Windows also both see fit to implement it this way, IIRC, so
it's probably not unreasonable).

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